Not for the World
by BlueWay
Summary: Team Rocket has returned. One former Cop is called again to serve, drawn from her exile. High above the city of Saffron, history repeats as a criminal crew seizes the Silph Co. Building, has taken hostages, and learned from their past, declaring war against a new world. Caught 100 stories from help, ex-Cop Janie McCain is tired, alone, and the only shot anyone has got to survive.
1. 7:02 AM to 2:16 PM

**Not for the World**

**By: Matthew "BlueWay" Novel**

* * *

**December 24th**

**7:02AM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

* * *

"I don't want you here." Cheery words from her former boss, in the most wonderful time of the year. Then again, Janie McCain hadn't exactly left the Celadon City Police Department on good terms. It involved said boss's windows getting broken in by her, storming out of the office while her badge was lodged into the department's only working printer. Eventually she did have to mention this to her subsequent employer, but she didn't get fired (or hired) because she was bad at being a police officer.

"Still haven't apologized you prick." She agreed. Her accent was thick with Celadon, almost like the Mafiosos of yesteryear, her voice high and bright and, when she yelled, it sounded like glass breaking. Her fair skin had been liable to that dangerous middle ground between tan and burn in the dryer seasons, but she had thick skin that, on her head at least, framed by short, dirty blonde hair. They told her she was much too pretty (sexism in the workplace was oh so subtle) to cut her hair like she did: like a man, her eyes seemingly always furrowed and her lips thin enough that some doubted blood rain through them. She was in a profession that was more masculine than most, so her button nose had taken a hit and there was a slight marring on it from a punch a perp tossed at her.

"The hell did you just say?" The beat of the helicopters dropping them off and then subsequently powering down had hid all of her words as she opened the door to the cabin, the pilot giving them a thumbs up that it had been okay to disembark.

That side of the Cerulean River that year had been wet and damp, the lack of snow at least welcome now to McCain as her boots hit the grass of a region she hadn't step back on in years.

She was twenty-eight now, five years since she left and five years running she had been a Pokémon Ranger of the Fiore Region. It was a move, undoubtedly, but new starts and beginnings was something she needed. Hadn't meant she made amends, but the fact that her old boss was here and she had been jet lagged as all hell, picked up from Vermillion City's port and flown out to where she was now, it soured her usually less-sour mood, an unkind face put on her.

The ear protection she wore in the chopper had been discarded back into it, if only after she had removed the ear protection of one of her loyal partners.

She had never been a Pokémon trainer, never had the time or the true drive to embark on any sort of journey. Still, it didn't mean she was totally uninitiated, having done community service in her teens in Celadon's Gym. They told her she had been enough of a lass to join the gym and its beauties, but she declined. Still, she didn't leave that particular portion of her life completely empty-handed.

The Grovyle that had exited behind her had been about 3/4ths her size, and she herself had been a healthy 5'7. Larger than most examples of his species, but "Hops", as was his name, had a more privileged upbringing than most. Between being a Gym-bred Pokémon and stuffing himself silly in her parent's family restaurant, he was a tad bigger than most of his kind.

He was never claimed in the conventional sense by McCain. No Pokéball was needed at first. She was there when he was hatched, and he had been raised by her as community service after 'accidentally' trespassing on the gym in the first place. Annoyance turned into genuine care, and as far as Gym Leader Erika could recommend on McCain's behalf, she would've been a good guardian to Hops.

"You ever imagine being a Flying-Type, bud?" There had been a stalk of wheat in Hops' mouth, the Grass-Type having picked that up as his tic. It hadn't exactly been cheap, but McCain could afford. The lizard had shrugged in an apathetic head tilt, offering half of the stalk to her. She took it handedly, chewing on the head and beginning that process of turning gluten into gum in her mouth. "Ain't that bad. If you were a Staraptor or something we could be flyin' everywhere. Ain't none of this airplane or chopper bullshit."

She knew her partner better than he would appreciate though, at least when it came to giving him a hard time. She knew he had gotten a little pale around his eyes when he flew, and that the knuckles before his long fingers became white. It was a natural Grass-Type fear: toward anything that involved flying. Quite frankly she saw it as adorable, tugging on her dear Hops' cheek as he swiped her hand away.

Her old boss had stepped in front of her. The old man hadn't gotten any younger in her half-decade absence, but maybe it was because he too had been liable to the fact that this was happening at 7AM and no coffee had been around. He wore a suit that seemed to crumple around him as he moved, despite its fit. He was dressed up for something far more formal then this, but yet his badge still hung on his belt. The job had stressed his hair out, wrinkles forming to shape his face as a perpetual crinkle. He had been the chief in charge when Team Rocket made its final play at the Silph Co. years ago, and had been on call for assistance when they came back from the dead in Johto, trying to use radio science to brainwash Pokémon to do their bidding. There was a great deal expected from the man who had personally hand-cuffed Giovanni after he was found hiding out in Vermillion City after the attack, and his personality showed it.

Chief Sevson didn't see McCain as prudent to his interest or health, with the way she had conducted his orders when she was on the force. A different chief had hired her out of the academy after all. The man looked like a Snubbull made man, and he snarled like one. "Come on, McCain, I don't know why the hell the other chiefs and the DA wanted you on this, but I'll take great pleasure in throwing you in a shit show."

The helicopter pilot from the Cerulean PD, a Pidgeot tattoo sleeve adorning his exposed arms had waved the two off. He'd be waiting for them, as was his orders.

"Look Sevson," the three of them started walking as McCain talked, the Pidgey and Spearow that had been awake looking at them from the trees surrounding the clearing. "If you really don't want me here why was it your office that put in the transfer request to Fall City?"

Lunick, her CO, hadn't been happy that he was losing her during the holiday season. With such high transit rates for cargo and what not for gifts, Pokémon smuggling was at an all time high, and McCain was in particular needed for the more… dangerous situations.

"Overruled." Sevson said once, stepping over a bush and revealing a dirt path forward. Vaguely, McCain had thought that these paths were what trainers on their journeys went on all the time, but there had been an air of isolation surrounding that one. "We wanted to keep this in house, or at least, in region, but well, something came up that would've made that hard."

"Oh yeah?" McCain pocketed her bare hands in her leather jacket's pockets, a slight red hue to it the most that her current boss had gotten her to wear. "Me and the department back home haven't heard squat."

Sevson nodded as he saw Hops step ahead. There was a certain air of danger that the Grovyle felt. It was in his instincts, but Sevson knew better, he already was down this road last night when the 911 call was made and the responding officer alerted him to the situation. "For good reason. This isn't the sort of thing we want broadcasted. This is on a need to know basis."

"But it involves the Rangers?" McCain took the straw out of her mouth as she paused on the path, and Sevson looked back at her, exasperated. She had never seen him walk this fast in her life.

"Yes. Now come on, when you learn who else is involved, you'll want to put a little pep in your step too missy."

The gluten from the straw started to form in her mouth, she coming to, habitually, match the chewing motions of her Pokémon. Still she didn't move. "I still don't have jurisdiction here. We aren't International Police."

"Christ- Just look." Sevson chopped his hand at her, his other hand dragging down his face. "Just come with me McCain. I don't want you here, but I think you _need _to be here. And if not me, a whole lotta other people."

There was a sincerity in Sevson's words that McCain had only seen once before, and that had been when he was telling her off. It really must've been serious. Then again, she never underappreciated how serious Sevson took the situations given to him.

Hops and McCain shared a look, it was one that was of agreement. The cocksure smirk that McCain had on her face for the entire time back in Kanto so far, just in the presence of her ex-boss, it melted away.

"Fine, fine." She held up her hands. "Lead the way Chief." Sevson's eyes had gone wide, finally getting what he wanted for all of McCain's dragging, but it did nothing to keep her complacent. "Who's we anyway?"

"A lot of people. My department. Cerulean PD. Indigo League. Rangers. The Feds…"

A puff of air, her frosty breath, came out of her mouth. It was almost a pout. "You're making me feel special Chief."

Distantly Cerulean City could be heard, the way a city awakes and the sound that the Pokémon who were acquainted with urban life had been a tell-tale sign that, even during Christmas, there was a day-to-day routine for some. The river had however provided a large enough distance and a big enough obstacle to keep their current location relatively hidden.

This area hadn't been untouched however, it was just a secret unto itself.

Only now did McCain notice the "keep out!" signs written along with fines and jail time.

Cerulean City was built at the eastern-base of Mount Moon, the outcropings of rocks and hills that eventually built up to the Kanto Region's main mountainous area starting on this side at the very lip of Cerulean. That's why McCain had been led into the shadow of one of those said rocky hills, a chill in the air manifesting in the frost of her breath. Hops had fallen back in line with, perhaps to leech off her body heat, perhaps for something more.

There had been something more ominous about this area than the surroundings of an idyllic forest let on. The ever present, and yet unseen, population of Pokémon faded away, leaving the forest dead.

Vien Forest in Almia had suffered a fire a few years ago, and, distantly, McCain remembered the feeling she had when she was among the few responders after the disaster to help with relief efforts. It felt dead. Here, without the ash of the skeletons of once healthy trees, that feeling pervaded her as she was led through by Chief Sevson.

The very light seemed to dim as the forest got thicker, all leading up to an entrance to what she only assumed to be a cave, the size of a small shack. And before that entrance: a flash of orange; a young woman clad in a hoodie and jeans. College age. Surrounding her had been figures, clad in black and muted colors. The mouth of the cave had been cordoned off with police tape, some officers on guard, all those there waiting awarded with McCain's arrival.

All eyes were on the Ranger and her Grovyle as they emerged from the forest. The young, orange-haired woman approached her first with authority that betrayed her looks.

"Janie McCain. Ranger Union." From her back pocket she flipped out a leather wallet, flaps falling, ID card verifying. Old and worn, it had been sat on for the good part of a decade by her. That wasn't the only thing the younger woman caught as it was open. She saw a picture held in that wallet of McCain and a man, black and white, held in one another's arms and obviously having a good time. In another photo: a Treeko, and McCain as a young girl, the Pokémon perched atop her head.

Bright blue pupils looked up into McCain's muted green, she, trying her best, to really mean what she said: "Merry Christmas! Name's Misty Williams. I'm Gym Leader for Cerulean City."

McCain's eyes flashed with familiarity, extending her hand as the Gym Leader met her half way for a firm shake. It very much was firm, despite her size. "Ain't it Waterflower?" She asked, the younger woman shrugging. It was a question asked of her more times than she cared to answer, but then again this was the first time in the longest while she had to talk to cops.

"That's my family's stage name when we're using the gym for shows."

Admittedly McCain had felt a tad dumb. "Ah."

Maybe her sisters would've introduced themselves to the authorities with their fake names, but the reason she hadn't had also been the reason she had been put in charge of this jurisdiction of the Indigo League.

She was flanked by people that not many in Kanto or Johto had known existed, their name plainly said on the patches on their shoulders: The Gatekeepers. Soft-shell tactical jackets hid tactical vests beneath them, rowed with everything they needed to keep areas within the Indigo League that even veteran trainers had no reason to access. There was a line in that world between adventure and secrets to be kept safeguarded, and that line was defended by a handful of people that the Indigo League saw fit to run security.

One of those lines were drawn in the perimeter around Cerulean Cave.

On their vests had also been items that had, to the public, faded into a certain obscurity. Any child in kindergarten would, thanks to any amount of action movies or videogames, know what a gun would look like. They could draw crude blocky versions of them with crayons and what not, but to see one, and the even lower chance of even handling one, it had been out of the public consciousness.

That was why it had been a blue moon over Cerulean when half a dozen young men and women who looked like the type to be security forces had wielded black rifles and shotguns, magazines and shells mounted on their vests as, oddly enough, an array of Pokéballs were also mounted, either on their chests or on their battle belts.

They had surrounded Misty as if a VIP, and, in a certain sense, she had been. Aviators or cloth masks had covered their faces. Not because they needed the particular added sense of coolness or aesthetics, but because it had been a bright and chilly morning, the river that separated the caves from the rest of Cerulean foggy and, well, misty.

"Don't be intimidated, these guys wouldn't hurt a Cutiefly." She smirked. "They hadn't even needed to use those _things_ in years." A finger of hers was gestured to the guns, but McCain needed no explanation.

Regular cops hadn't even been issued handguns nowadays ever since the public whiplash that she had been a part of. Growlithe or any other amount of canine Pokémon had been sufficient enough, and, at the very highest, pepper spray or tasers were used otherwise. Then again McCain hadn't exactly been a regular cop. That was why the Rangers took her in. '_Just in case'_ was the reason for much of her postings as a Ranger. Her right hand had gone to the right flap of her jacket, opening it up to reveal a leather array meant, in the end, only to holster the tools of her trade: A pistol.

Nine-millimeter parabellum. Black, metal, wooden grips picked out and sliced by Hops himself. _9mm Hi-Power. _Thathad been the name of that particular model. It was her duty gun as one of Celadon PD's SWAT Officers. Special Weapons and Tactics. Only for the most dangerous of suspects and Pokémon gone rogue. She was one of only five people in Celadon licensed to carry a gun at the time. One of maybe several dozen in all of Kanto, most of them being the same as her or the Gatekeepers before her apparently.

Misty seemed surprised that McCain carried, and it drew the attention of the Gatekeepers. Concern had written on their faces. The former cop knew the look. It was shared with elite trainers who came across others who had a party that shared a particular Pokémon: When they were that high up on the food chain certain trainers thought themselves the only one's worthy of training, say, Garchomp or Sevipers.

McCain could only flash a placating smile, letting the flap of her jacket fall only to open the other one and drawing the implement the other side of the holster carried: It was red, held like a remote with straps to be attached at her wrist, a top like device at the lip of it. "Ah, it's alright, I use this one now mostly."

Standard issue for every Ranger out of their school: A Capture Styler.

"I've seen what Rangers look like," Misty tilted her head at McCain, intrigued, uncomfortable even for a reason McCain couldn't place. "Aren't you supposed to be wearing those jackets with the-" She gestured at her shoulder, faintly making a circle.

McCain racked her head in response, pocketing her hands again. "I'm plain-clothed right now. The uniform doesn't really hide me, you dig?" That and her current Ranger rank was at a current, out of lack words, standstill. She wasn't too proud of it but she knew the politics.

"And McCain here has been told to keep a low-profile coming in." Sevson tipped his head at the young woman.

Misty's face hardened, nodding in agreement. "For good reason."

"Didn't know Gym Leaders had any business at a crime scene." McCain pointed at the yellow tape and the boys in blue, arms cocked akimbo otherwise. This _really _was a crime scene, it dawned on McCain now. "Where are you even here anyway?"

"The Cerulean Caves, and that is why I'm even here. Indigo League personnel are given authority over any sites deemed off-limits by the Indigo League and the Federal Government." She talked big for a twenty-year old, McCain had noticed, but she deserved it apparently, and if she was put in charge McCain had no reason to disagree.

"Cerulean Caves?" Darkness ruled what she could see, looking into the cave. It called for her Styler. It had been a multi-tool that, every once and a while when she left it for maintenance at her station, a few new features would be added. It had been both annoying and helpful to some extent, but at the end of the day she didn't like relying on it, or anything else that was in her leather shoulder holsters. The Styler had come out, the straps of it hanging loosely until she had wrapped the device like a gauntlet around her left hand. The top, the capture disk, emitting a bright light from its bulb as she held her hand to aim, the bright beam aiming inward. "Ain't never heard of it."

"It's purposeful." Misty went on as the Chief went to reconnoiter with some of his men, posted on guard. "The League uses this area as a preserve of sorts, for Pokémon who either can't cohabitate with humans or for-" The Gym Leader stopped herself short. "Well, Pokémon who think themselves too dangerous to be discovered."

Hops had stared into that cave, his very skin pricked at an unidentifiable force he could not name if he had to. There was an intense darkness that came from it, and the coldness of his breath hadn't been from the temperature.

Some of the Gatekeepers, they too had done the same, wary of it, almost… fearful? That was the word McCain used as she spit out some of the chaff from her stalk.

Still her eyes had been splitting attention between the cave and the Gatekeepers themselves. She never much liked anyone who carried a gun, herself included. To use one meant that everything else had failed, and that a more regrettable side of human action needed to be taken on. To be a person who had been so imbued with such tactical nature; "operators" as they used to call these type of gunfighters, there had been a certain aura to them that rang out from their gear and how well it was put together in order to create the most efficient way to kill someone.

She would know. She once was adorned with the title of Captain attached to the Special Weapons and Tactics team of Celadon. She dressed the same way and the ghost of that gear had been over her body everyday she allowed herself to think of the incidents where it came away bloody.

"Who died?" The words came out bluntly. Misty looked at her blankly, and although she didn't say it loudly, the words spoke volumes. Even Chief Sevson turned back around to look at McCain, staring down whatever her Grovyle had been. She didn't get an answer after a few moments, looking back to Misty. "Who died?" She asked again.

"Did you-?" There was confusion on Misty's face.

_Ah right. _"I'm guessing." She admitted. "I was a beat cop for a few years, and after that, I kicked down doors. I don't beat around bushes, sweetheart, so uh-" She wiped the cold sweat that had perspired on her, between having a flannel on beneath the leather jacket and the nerves that were being stepped on right now by said cave, it was understandable she had one. "I just got that feeling."

"Like a Mandibuzz, eh?"

McCain's eyes glazed over. "What?"

"Vulture-like Pokémon, they come from Unova."

"Ah, right… I'm not too big on Pokémon as a whole. My husband is the one that was a trainer." In the morning light Misty could only now notice the flash of a wedding band on McCain's finger. It was golden, encrusted with what looked to be amber stones.

"He his then?" Misty pointed to Hops.

McCain shook her head proudly. "All mine." Her hand ran the back of his neck fondly. "Rangers allow one personal Pokémon for partners. He's mine. Always has been."

Hops shot a look at her, words in his language falling out his mouth as he spoke to her. "I know, I know, you're your own man." She talked to him. "You're still mine though. Always will be."

There was a playfulness in the Grovyle's small punch to her side, but nothing she couldn't handle. Misty always enjoyed seeing trainers be honest friends with their partners. Too many had seen them as tools, as Pokémon first. To see someone who hadn't been a trainer act so well, it gave her some merry hope that Christmas Eve that the world would be okay despite whatever happened in that cave.

Still, there was no use staving off the inevitable, Misty turning to the police chief. "Chief Sevson?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm taking her inside now."

The Chief flashed a thumbs up, going back to talking with his officers still securing the entrance, vaguely talking about clean up for the crime scene. That's all McCain could hear as one of the Gatekeepers approached her, a rifle in one hand for himself, another for her. She only knew this when he offered it to her.

"You know how to use one of these things?"

CAR-4. .223. Red dot optic had sat on top of its flat rail system with a flashlight also attached.

It was in her hand and she had thrown the sling over her body, racking back the chamber half way to see if brass had been loaded. It had been. That was her answer to him. "What do I need this for?"

"Danger." One of the Gatekeepers finally spoke out. "Leader Misty already told you, some Pokémon here don't take too kindly to humans."

A Pokéball had been tossed up in the air, the sound of it popping followed by that familiar sound of the form inside said Pokéball spilling onto the ground into its true self. About the same size as Hops.

The Grovyle snapped to the bright white. He was never one for battles, or, at least, he was never into regulation Pokémon Battles, but still he knew what it usually meant when a Pokéball was popped. Gut reactions, knee jerk moves. It kept the mind healthy and the wits sharp. Sharp enough for Hops to be right before a Golduck. Misty's Golduck. It had seen battle, undoubtedly, faint scars seen past feathers. That kind of ruggedness was what Misty depended on as the Golduck took count of where he was at. Just like Hops and McCain before him, the Golduck could only with a certain amount of dread, look into the abyss that had been Cerulean Cave. It squawked several times at its trainer, understanding why it was woken up that morning.

The two Pokémon sized each other up, coolly, Hops taking the straw out of his mouth. If it came down to a fight, the Grovyle knew who was more liable to win, and the two Pokémon respected that in each other in a subtle fist bump.

Before anymore impromptu greetings could be had the sound of more Pokéballs popping had surrounded the area. For once though, the Pokémon that emerged were almost as fierce as their trainers. Arcanine, Aggaron, Nidoking, a Lucario; fierce Pokémon that would otherwise only be seen in veteran trainers.

_They were _veteran trainers, McCain realized. Trainers first perhaps.

The Gatekeeper that had talked to her had again spoke, his hair had been slicked back aggressively, his eyes hidden behind aviators. He was a younger man, obviously, but his body had looked like that of a man who had trained for at least thirty year prior. He seemed like he could fight his Lucario to a standstill. "When you're in there, you stay behind us. If we fire, you can too, but only _if _we do. But if we do, please, don't shoot any of my team in the fucking back." His voice dripped of the islands off the Galar Region

If McCain hadn't been awake yet, she had been awake now, harsh words ushering her coherence up and out. To hear someone be concerned about her shooting someone, it was a thought. Misty didn't seem to mind however. There were more important matters to attend.

The Gym Leader gestured with her off hand. It was time to head back into the belly of the beast. "If you would, Ranger, follow me. We need to get you up to speed."

* * *

**December 24th**

**8:13AM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

Cave crawling was part of the job she came into after police work. Her jeans had been padded on the inside for the harsh edges of glass, steel, or rocks if it came down to her crawling. Her gloves had been worn down to the last stitches of fabric on cliffs half a world away, an atmosphere up it felt. She was used to the rough and tumble of being an outdoorsman now. Being a Ranger kept her on the move more than she had as a cop, and because of it, she had been long used to these sorts of locales. To do it with a rifle in her hands however, it had been a new experience altogether. What little difficulty she did have in those wet and dank caverns were amplified only because the Gatekeepers had no difficulty at all walking through the slippery and jaggy surfaces. It was a dangerous locale, but that hadn't been where the threat of lethality lain.

"Usually caves like these are teeming with Pokémon." The deadness of that entire area, both inside and out of that cave had picked at McCain's mind long enough. She didn't enjoy it. Not when that day, of all days, was supposed to be a day she was, according to society, supposed to be unconditionally full of cheer. "What gives?"

Misty answered promptly. She too was having some difficulty, but her footing had been better than McCain's. She knew the layout of the cave too well. "We have a mutual friend in here that is in charge. He's keeping the cave quiet while we start our investigation."

"Gatekeeper?" One of them had sniggered at the assumption that said mutual friend had been a Gatekeeper. "Oh what? He Red himself then? He ain't just chilling up there on Mt. Silver like half the damn documentaries say he is?" There was an annoyance in McCain's voice.

"Nah, Red's up there, Ranger." That same slick Gatekeeper responded as Misty's Golduck, using some sort of Telekinesis, did away with a rock formation blocking their path. The only real illuminating light that hadn't been some sort of refraction off the streams inside the cave had been either head mounted flashlights or McCain's own Styler. That being said there was ambient light in the form of crystals. Blue, luminescent. It reminded McCain of the moon on the clearest nights. What the hell were they she couldn't guess, too proud to ask and really not too inclined to care. "Who else is gonna keep watch on-"

"Shush you." Secrets were often in plain sight, the lesser mysteries that the authorities often chased after were solved by such details. Misty, for whatever the secrets the Indigo League had itself, wished to keep them secrets.

Slick had provided most of the chatter on the way down. He knew the danger enough that, to him, there was no immediate danger. So he passed it with talk. Of Christmas, of gifts, the relationship he had with the rest of his squad very apparent as the usual rainbow of feelings and emotions that grew out of groups like that were played out like cards. Some were annoyed at him, some had fed into his words, and some blocked him out as they concentrated on the fact they were knee deep in the dark.

"Long as you guys ain't doing anything illegal, ain't my problem." Then again just looking at these people, McCain felt that duality of the law. They looked too scary to be peaceful, law abiding or law enforcing. Chewing the wheat had become a forgone conclusion, sitting on her molars as she clenched her jaw on many a wet surface, let alone think about what legal rodeo included them, two police departments, and the Feds.

The Cerulean Caves were nothing more or less than a labyrinth, albeit one that the Indigo League had its pulse so rather tightly. There had been infrastructure in there: set up camp sites, ladders to lower levels, spare supplies built into steel cases for any who would find themselves in here. It only highlighted how separated this place was from the world. Only Mt. Coronet seemed like a more dangerous place, and even then, the threat of Pokémon there had been unique in nature. She was in the last year of her Captainship on the SWAT team, not that she knew it, and as Team Galactic threatened to tear reality inside out, there was a request to send her team out there before it was too late.

Some trainers had a hand on it however.

The paths were still dangerous here, no flat surface for sure footing in one speck of those so-called lanes of travel except for momentary reprieves dug out by those that came before them.

Hops had, while waiting for Misty's Golduck to clear the way, let his nose look. The Pokémon himself had no trouble. He was nimble as befit his ilk and his pads were sticky when prompted. His species were hunters among the Hoeannic Ecosystem, senses made and formed for the sake of finding their prey. He might've been cold-blooded, but only physically, using his senses only to, at that moment, sniff at the air.

A few chirps, here and there, emanated from him thoughts forming into a coherent statement. All of it understood by McCain. The language of Grovyles hadn't been an easy one to learn, but, as with most Pokémon, trainers often picked up the tongue.

"Yeah. I smell it too." McCain almost emulated her Pokémon, using her nose as she leaned against one rock wall.

It was almost scary that particular stench that pervaded that air: the other Pokémon had been more familiar with. It was intoxicating almost.

"When I first was assigned here by the league, after a year or two as serving as Gym Leader," Misty started, a seriousness coating her words thickly. "They had me camp out for several days in here to get to learn the place. I had to of course, given my new duties, but it's that smell- Stays with ya, you know?"

Blood. It smelled like blood mixed with moss.

"Yeah. I know." McCain's words were haunted by herself.

The slick Gatekeeper breathed harshly, sadly. "The Pokémon here, originally, were from Team Rocket a few years ago. The ones they stole, forced to fight illegally or used for hard labor, the League put them here after Giovanni was arrested." McCain recognized the accent if only because a few immigrants in Celadon had come from Galar, and it stuck in her mind. "No one could rehabilitate them, and if we pursued the euthanizing option it'd put Kanto over its annual limit and then for the next five years."

It was cleaner to put them down, that much McCain could understand. She had shot dead more than her fair share of feral or raging Pokémon who had either enough of abusive trainers or otherwise sought to do harm to Celadon. Then again, the way their society had been, to make such an option a norm would be to trod on ethical questions that were better off unanswered.

A question whom the mutual friend that tended to this cave often thought about.

"They fight a lot, don't they?" McCain asked, seeing the tell-tale signs of battle scratched across those stony walls. Violence for violence was the rule of beasts, and despite it all, Pokémon were still just that: monsters.

Misty nodded. "It doesn't help that this League and those worldwide use the Cerulean Caves as a proverbial dumping ground for similarly-cased Pokémon." There was bitterness in her words and McCain couldn't help but feel sorry for the young woman. It was in part due to her age, what history McCain did know of hers because of either tabloids or rumors that her husband picked up on the trail of his own journey (left behind to take up the mantle as Gym Leader as her sisters galivanted across the world with their beauty), but mostly because of this: Misty just outright reminded her of her husband.

Responsibility, the worry of those she was in charge of; Misty Williams was getting old, and leading men and women with the ability to kill, it wrote on her face. McCain had seen it done over the years, right in front of her.

"Rumor has it a few of the Shadow Pokémon from Orre that were too far gone are also in here." Another Gatekeeper commented, a cigarette they had been smoking offering only the slightest hint at her facial features. The crashing of rocks denoted that the way was clear, and the group moved on forward at Misty's lead.

It was an odd comment however, keeping McCain stay on her feet still. "Shouldn't you know? It's your job after all?"

Slick shook his head as he passed her. "We can't afford to have an armed guard on the entrance 24/7. We only emerge from our cabins if our motion sensors get tipped off, and even then, if they're quick enough they can leave before we respond. Usually wandering trainer see the signs and scamper off, but uh, for those who know what this cave is about they just drop the cargo and leave."

"No official form that the other regions can fill out? Not even any manifests?"

Misty shrugged. "If it were that easy. Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Kalos are usually good about alerting us and we approving it, but the Orrians and Unovans among others like to play the plausible deniability game, and, to be fair, our _mutual friend_ doesn't mind it. He tries his best to help any and all that come here."

Hops touched the ground, and the faint impression of a mark left behind by what appeared to be a Rhydon was there with a deeper impression of a Scyther beneath it. "I suppose me and Hops are privy to this information now because…?"

"Context." The Gym Leader was more than polite. "Besides, according to Chief Sevson your confidentiality oaths are still in play from your time as a Celadon police officer."

McCain rolled her eyes, walking back up to speed.

"Why'd you leave anyway? When we heard your name get brought up we asked around. Said you were a pretty fine officer, our material, even." Another Gatekeeper poked at her. With the way their masks had been on their faces she couldn't tell who had been speaking, but she answered. She wasn't afraid of her past, just not proud of it.

"Didn't agree with the PD's policies when I left. Is all." A boldface half-truth, half-lie.

"And so you hopped over to be a Ranger? Why not another PD?"

Her husband asked that question almost everyday. Sometimes it was out of pettiness, sometimes it was out of wist, but either way it was a question she was very familiar with. "Rangers act toward the best, social good. When I was a cop, I protected and served, there's a… difference, ya feel me?"

"Watch it." A hole in the floor the group curved around, going deep and down.

If she was being brought here because some idiot fell down a hole she would've been a little mad: it was wasted time, and the last time she investigated a death had been five years ago.

"Besides, I don't think the Indigo League would like someone like me."

"Yeah?" Misty seemed interested.

McCain nodded, checking back to see if Hops was still near. He had been, just shy of hopping on her back like he had on the more tiring treks of hers. "I don't have an official license for Pokémon ownership… At least, not for the class Hops is on."

"We have the ability to fine people you know." Slick said again, teasingly. In the back of her head she also was reminded they had the ability to shoot people at present, and in the abstract sense of the word.

"Eh, Hops just follows me around wherever I go and I feed him. I don't own him."

"So no arguments if I-" A Pokéball came out. "Tag him and bag him?"

McCain shot daggers at Slick and Hops had been liable to shoot his Bullet Seed in sync. "I'd shoot you dead, if you try."

* * *

**December 24th**

**8:45AM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

Misty clambered over the last outcroppings of rock, and suddenly, the rock floor beneath them had felt refined. "Alright, we're coming up on the place now. It's your show the second you get a hold of it."

McCain knelt down, finger tips feeling the smooth sheen of the floor. This had been a Pokémon's doing, as far as she could tell, the clean cuts were from any number of Fire-Type Pokémon paired with those who biologically had access to blades. Scyther, Kabutops, Honedges, the list went on in her head, remembering what sparsely she remembered. Her husband had a PokéDex she flipped through on lazy days when he visited her in Fiore. "What's the big secret anyway?" She raised herself up, rifle still ready. It had been a while since she had been offered a full-length assault rifle, and the times she had to use one as intended she could count on one hand.

"If we told you, you'd be asking questions we don't have answers to." Misty went on again. Ahead: the faint sound of activity. First, they had heard from the cave, not one Pokémon sighted since they entered barring their own. The artificial hum of a generator came with the artificial glow of floodlights in the distance.

Wherever they were, it had felt like ruins, but made as is. It screamed to a lack of resources; to make do with what they had.

In the dark of that cave vague forms of buildings, huts, rooms and places carved into the walls and stones. Someone, something, lived here. Where people lived then, people were liable to be killed. That was the reality of crime after all. Even Pokémon committed crimes on their own that she had to respond to.

Pokémon knew how to live on their own, and this had been proof. The world over, she had seen these types of colonies. Some had been dedicated to one species and one species only, some had been communes, managed not unlike a town of human sort. McCain had been guest in many as a Ranger. To be a Ranger meant that Pokémon recognized a certain character within one; word traveled somehow and the Rangers were always around to help those places where Pokémon made their own societies.

And in any case: they had come before man, and, McCain had figured, they would be here after man.

A whistle emanated from one of the Gatekeepers as they approached the source of light and sound, and one was sent back in response. Following the shrill noise, after an hour of pure cave trekking, they had made it.

"_He _calls this town-square." One of the Gatekeepers said as an asides to McCain, those same blue crystals jutting out and making lines like the veins of the cave itself.

A stream made its way around the edges of the cavern, foot bridges made with driftwood and abandoned signs connecting the affair into a tangible affair that could very much be seen as a town center. Where they were had creeped on the uninitiated, the Ranger and Grovyle only now noticing the open space they were in had been the size of a football stadium, sounds echoing in subtle harmony with the running of water.

It was peaceful, but the feeling that they had been trespassing kept McCain's hand on her gun and Hops with his head on the swivel.

Three figures emerged out of the dark, approaching them from the seeming bubble of light that the stands of floodlights offered.

"We still good?" Slick called out.

One bothered Gatekeeper grumbled. "Cold as shit. You bring coffee?"

A thermos was thrown and the three figures cheered.

"We also brought a cop."

"Ranger." McCain corrected. Contrary to popular belief there was a difference. Any other words she had to say had been stayed as the light took them, flashlights off, and everything had been laid before her, frozen in time minus the dignity given to the shape of a man, face down in the stone.

Someone had indeed died.

"Shit."

A white cloth had draped itself over a body, the slight draining of a red color coming out beneath it and in the center, not runny, but still, courtesy of the cave, moist. It was blood. Actually blood.

She guessed it had been a man, by its size, but made no assumptions as her eyes scanned the area again. Not for danger, but for clues, hints, anything that she could draw without anyone saying anything.

Gatekeepers sipped their coffee as Golduck disappeared back into its Pokéball with Misty, the rest of the Pokémon still on guard. Battle had been written on all of their figures: The Lucario owned by Slick had one of its eyes faded and its chest spike chipped. Elsewhere: an Arcanine was missing a patch of fur while a horn was missing entirely by a Houndoom. Scars, lost fingers or claws, chunks of flesh missing, it all screamed toward Pokémon battles that had not been fought for the sake of fighting. They had been fought for the sake of survival and violence.

"First time this has happened while I've been in charge here." There was disappointment in the Gym Leader's voice, almost as if she held blame. McCain could only offer a hand on her shoulder, a nod.

"What happened?" McCain still asked.

She sat down on a rock, wicking some pebbles out of the tread of her boots. "I think it's just better if you looked."

_Right. _As was the reason she was dragged out this far on Christmas Eve's Morning. She could've been back in Fiore, getting the house back in order from its usual chaos to put on something presentable for her husband and to enjoy the holidays. This came first before she was able to clock out however from the station.

With concern, she glanced at Hops. He was too young, in her opinion, to be anything more than her ride-along while she was a cop. As a Ranger she had been more willing to have him by her side, always, but that only meant she had wondered if-

She reached deep down in her pocket, pulling out a red and white orb as she threw the assault rifle on her back. "You can go back in, if you want."

She offered him an out. All she got had been a reassuring squeeze on her forearm as he guided her arm to put the Pokéball away. Of course, he had been registered to a Pokéball under her ownership. He just didn't like to be in it.

_Alright then. _There was a switch in her head that flicked. It was off usually, her concerns and liabilities as a Ranger having overwritten her sensibilities as a cop with time, but she kept it all in her back pocket like an extra magazine for her gun (which there had been even now). She steeled herself to see the sight of a dead human being again, creeping forward as the Gatekeepers looked on, the light given by the floodlights harsh, but all revealing, focused on the scene of the crime.

Kneeling down, she smelled nothing but the cave as her hand held the white sheet. In one move, it had been sent up and out.

McCain had wondered why Misty seemed so uncomfortable when she mentioned that she knew what a Ranger looked like. She'd seen one before: in fact, she'd seen the dead one before them.

That signature red jacket with the rank on its shoulder hadn't done much to cover up the three bullet holes on the man's back, human blood much darker than the shade on the Ranger Uniform, even for how faded this was. That was the first thing she noticed as her gaze drew up to the back of the man's head. Thankfully-

"No GSW to the head." She stated, not to anyone in particular, but as a note.

Gunshot wound.

The man's head had been covered by a scruffy brown, but there had been blood pooling at his face, the man face down against rock. McCain wanted to move, to see what face was left, the man obviously having fallen hard on his face when shot, but there more pressing matters as she drew the entire sheet off of him.

A Pokémon Ranger was dead, and he deserved nothing less then all due process for his justice.

Janie McCain did her job as she stood up, an old checklist in her head gone up and through.

"Who found the body?" Questions were going to flood all those present and she would not apologize for it.

"Our mutual friend. He should be here in a few minutes." One of the Gatekeepers who had remained with the body answered. _Mutual friend_ had been a choice word, but McCain could deal with the ambiguities.

"Okay. When was this?"

"He came and tried to contact me last night." Slick had stepped forward, "But uh- I was knocked out cold." His aviators had come off and revealed a very blackened eye, highlighting a face that looked very much like a cat, scowled. "Was my shift last night on the grounds and I didn't see the punch coming."

McCain had drawn a notepad from her jacket's a pencil afterwards as a new section was started, the Styler on her wrist turned on and recording. She would have to thank Professor Hastings for the capability later.

"Attacked? By a human? Human fist?" McCain pressed, leaning in to get a look. The Gatekeeper pulled back however, hand up.

"Yeah. I know what the fist of a man feels like, not a Hitmonchan or anything like that" Slick admitted, his aviators slid back on. "No one should know we're out here, and we dress like this so, if we zip up, it's not exactly showing that's were loaded. By the time I woke up rest of the guys were already pressing into the caves to catch whoever gave me this." The black eye had been rather gnarly, McCain not faulting the man to hide it.

"So, your friend has details on finding it then? When he found it and how he found it? Do any of you know that?" She prodded for details, hand writing, but head up and looking.

"The Gatekeepers woke me up around ten last night, if that means anything, to bring me out to the body." Misty corroborated, McCain nodding in understanding.

"Look, before I get to it then," Procedure rushed by her head as her notepad was set at her hip, pen paused. She was once slated to be a detective, maybe referred to the International Police if all went well, but alas her career, initially, ended up a little more violent. "Was this body touched by any of you? Who was the first responding officer?"

"Negative ma'am, and first responding officer is you." One of the Gatekeepers gestured with their weapon at McCain.

"Huh?"

"You are, ma'am. Celadon and Cerulean PD don't have any officers certified for these kinds of environments, and any who are in Kanto or Johto weren't responding till, I wager, this morning, now… It's Christmas, after all."

McCain breathed out annoyed, the gluten in her mouth spit out, only to be tucked behind her ear. She had a fade, a week or so ago, but she didn't often had time to attend to her hair, the blonde strands that did grow out giving her a rather fluffy, uneven buzzcut, working well with any helmet or hat she was expected to wear on the job. It also meant that anything she was chewing on could be saved without an unfortunate incident hair wise.

Her phone came out, camera swiped to as she turned around, aiming it at the body as she did a clean sweep, every angle she could in every degree.

"Done this before, Missus McCain?" Misty saw the routine that she went through, flipping through the photos to assure herself that she had what she needed. She paused only for a moment, being referred to like that.

"Call me Ranger or Jain, Miss Williams. Only Sister Harvey at my boarding school or my stock broker calls me that and I don't think you're either." Before anyone could make any quip at that she continued along, pocketing her phone. "So, you found him, like this?"

She insisted, gaze casting across all twelve Gatekeepers. All of them nodded or affirmed. "Haven't touched him, and we stayed on guard all night to make sure none of the locals did either."

There were no locals to speak of, but she appreciated the effort.

"Is this all contained here? Have you all found anything else?"

Again, they all shook their head in a unified answer. "We didn't go looking. Ain't our job."

"Fair enough." Again, her phone came out, turning to Hops. "Take this, go around, see what you can find. If you find anything grab a picture and uh-" To the Rangers surprise a handful of baggies had come out. "You know the drill."

With a playful salute, phone and bags in hand, Hops had gone off. The other Pokémon seemed weary but McCain did her best to persuade, looking back down at the body. "He's done crime scenes before, with me as a Ranger. Don't worry about him… Never a dead man though. Worst is a dead Pokémon, but well, nature is nature."

Slick clicked his tongue. "Ain't nothing natural about this."

"Don't need the commentary." She kneeled back down over the body, photos taken, latex gloves out of her jacket. She was well prepared and her jacket had a lot of pockets. Nothing in life was easy but she figured having everything but the kitchen sink would've done her well. She remembered too often, as a Ranger, coming across a crime scene and, without the ease of use of having a police cruiser to store stuff in, she had to improvise much to the chagrin of her superiors. When they went on with a snap, that was when she first touched his body, pausing when she felt that his body had been the temperate of the area.

It never got easier.

"Ranger Janie McCain, Grade 7. First reporting on the scene of an apparent homicide in Cerulean City, Caves adjacent to the city, further details listed in written report. Photos of crime scene taken beforehand, now examining." She spoke aloud, recorder picking it up. With one heave, his identity was revealed, his body going around, chest up toward the murky ceiling. "Parker you old bastard. Had to come running din't you?"

She said his name like a whisper. To see a body she recognized, eyes wide open, in pain, the front of his chest pooled with blood and his face cracked open from a split in front, hitting a rock on his way down, it pained her. His hands had been tucked in his stomach, clutching in pain it seemed, rigor mortis keeping him holding himself. Gently, McCain's hands closed his eyes.

"Did you know him?" Misty asked, over her shoulder. She was taking her first sight at a body, shot to death, rather well.

With one hand McCain backed her off. Shaking her head, she continued to speak into her Styler. "Victim is an adult male, mid to late 40s. Three GSWs to the back and blunt trauma to the head and face, probably from impact with the ground. Initially identified as a Pokémon Ranger, Rank…." She peeked at his shoulder. "Rank nine. Performing look up now."

She patted down his jacket, finding what she was looking for with little difficulty. It was this Ranger's Styler. Flicking it open, going to who it had been registered to, it had been confirmed. "Styler identifies victim as Ranger Preston Parker of the Oblivia Region. International Jurisdiction. Last contact appears to have been… three weeks ago."

Dead Rangers were never heard of. Pokémon usually saved them in their most vulnerable moments.

McCain turned to Misty, in the same move looking for boot prints to see where Parker had come from. No dice, the ground had been wet and no imprint was left, the note taken in her pad. "He's one of the older Rangers. Came from Johto, was a trainer for a long time and would do much of anything for 'em."

"Happen to know his ID number as a trainer?" Misty might've recalled him.

McCain shook her head, but patted around his body, slightly lifting it to gain access to his jacket. He was the sentimental sort enough to- McCain gave out a breath in surprise as she drew a hard case from his jacket, the symbol of the Indigo League on its worn metal. She opened it, rubbing her fingers over the case and knowing the decades it must've served to. It was a larger one, larger than her own wallet and thicker than most small books, but there was a reason to it as its contents were revealed.

He traveled far and wide. Hoenn, Kalos, Sinnoh, and the Sevii Islands among others had made their presence known as she opened it. Badges. Sets and sets of badges held in plastic pockets.

"He was a good one." McCain held onto his Styler while she placed the hard case back into his jacket, another bag from herself brought out and the device turned off, sealed up. She had fiddled with the plastic bag, weighing it faintly in her hands as she considered, remembered, the man it belonged to and whose body she stood over now. "In Ranger school he was a guest instructor on Pokémon pacification without a Styler. I didn't know him that well but he was one of the few Rangers that was gifted an international writ of passage."

She remembered the notes she took more than him, but he was an enterprising man: looking for any excuse to leave the classroom and get out and about. Wanderlust had been ingrained in this man and, like many carnal desires, it ended up destroying him. She could only assume that he was here because he was on a case and, independent as he was, he did it alone. Every Ranger had an Operator, back at HQ as their link back to base for messages and advising. Every once and a while McCain listened to her own give out office gossip.

Apparently, Parker's Operator was a very happy man: he came in to work and did nothing, only to be paid for it.

_"I'm getting to old for this," _Andrade would tell her during McCain's usual call-ins. _"Maybe I can get Gruber to replace me. He's basically robbing us, might as well make him work for it!"_

McCain would have to call Andrade when she got out of that place to talk about Parker unfortunately, and she didn't look forward to it. It never got easier to tell someone about the death of someone they knew.

Misty tilted her head as a phrase held in her mind captive. "What's that? The writ of passage?"

The Styler was pocketed and replaced by McCain's ID book, shown to Misty again as her index finger tapped on a detail tab called: JURISTIDCTION. "I'm currently only supposed to be in Fiore's domain of legal justice, even though the rule of law the Rangers use is international. Takes a lot of votes and a lot of politics for a Ranger to given a blank check to charge people and pursue investigations internationally. Must've helped that he had been a trainer."

The very fact he had been one clicked a switch in McCain's head, the woman crouching back down and going to his pants. Back pockets first: bulge of a wallet, taken out. Feraligatr skin, blue. Contents nothing out of the ordinary. Money, a condom that was sat on for far too long to trust, coupons and cards either for credit or debit. It was returned and his other pockets yielded nothing but lint and his personal phone. No charge.

His belt was more interesting.

Clear as day: six empty Pokéball holsters.

Silently, she swore to herself as she leaned in and read their names. Of all the people that would suffer from this, his Pokémon would suffer most. "Observation: No Pokéballs present on Ranger Parker despite presence of utilities."

"Wasn't us." One of the Gatekeepers spoke up and out, a cup of coffee being shared around.

McCain made no comment as she gripped the cold flesh of his arms, unfurling them to his side. Despite this, there still had been a Pokéball on his body.

Broken, but it had been one.

It fell out of the crook of his stomach, held desperately by him as his arms fell away.

Even without being a trainer McCain knew what that type of Pokéball was. Counterfeits of it had been turned up by her personally on port authority raids: the dream of any Pokémon trainer to have in order to catch whatever they wanted. It was a power so potent, the implications too high, that their production had been outlawed outright.

"Hey! Any of you got a camera?" One of the Gatekeepers stepped forward with their own phone, seeing exactly what McCain saw on top of Parker's stomach.

"Holy hell. Couldn't afford one of these things, and Santa no longer visits my house."

The photos that McCain took had been for regulation. She couldn't touch them if she didn't record how they were found. "Thanks. Text it to Celadon PD's tip line, note badge number…" She reached far back in her memory as she tried to remember the digits on her police badge. "5921"

It had been split in two by its hinge, the steel and glass insides stained with blood and dew. They were weighty, each half weighing as much as one Pokéball on its own. She verified as much as she drew Hops' own, popping it open and observing the insides of it on her own as she palmed over one of the halves.

Despite never really using it, she kept up maintenance on the ball, so much so that she had a hunch as she looked on what had been the inner lip of the ball, scanning for a string of numbers.

"Each Pokéball, upon leaving Silph Co.'s production line out in the Sevii Islands, is stamped with an ID number, correct?" She talked to herself, finding the numbers on the Pokéball she owned. It was a technique that she was made aware of in Celadon City. Sometimes it had been a Pokéball left behind in an assault, and they needed to track who had used the Pokémon and the Pokéball. Sometimes it had been simple lost and found cases, nothing more than a database lookup through Silph Co. services to track who purchased the ball.

Even if the broken object had been a _**Master Ball **_of all things, there was a standard that Silph Co.. kept up.

"Found a Master Ball. No serial number."

"Scratched off?" Misty asked, leaning in. A Master Ball was a rare sight nowadays.

"Nah. I'd see the abrasions. Nothing." The Master Ball was bagged, blood and all. "Note: Master Ball has been found on the scene, broken by its hinge and… seemingly, without an ID number. Ranger Parker was clutching this as he died it seemed."

All for the record, morbid as it was.

Even more morbid was McCain unbuttoning Parker's white undershirt, bled through red: three exit holes in his chest.

"Rounds went cleanly through," Clean was an oxymoron, but the amount of flesh ripped off by the exit had been minimal. Only holes, the size of her thumb, remained. "Suggests murder weapon was a pistol cartridge… and that the rounds are still around here."

Pebbles and rocks would've made whoever was going to be forensics here a nightmare to find, but it wasn't her deal.

The exit-wounds had cut through his lungs, and based on the red stains that dripped from the corners of his mouth, his nose, and how stained his teeth had been, he died sucking on his own blood.

"_Gr gr groo!" _ McCain snapped around to the sound. It had been Hops in the distance. Ushered forward and away she had gone to him, a few dozen yards away as Misty and Slick trailed, the rest taking post.

She couldn't even imagine running through this place, but Parker had known his footing. Had he run into that cave to hide from his attackers? Or had he known something else buried within? Had he known of this 'town', hidden with the caves? "How many entrances are there to this place?" McCain asked.

Slick had taken a glance around as they made it over the rocks and boulders displaced for the sake of development. "Asides from the way we came in? Can't say, _our mutual friend_ likes keeping that info from us just in case poachers pose as us."

It was curious that that of all things had been a threat. "I'd like to have a word with this person then."

"Many people would." Envy. Envy was on his voice. "God. I would love to just have him to myself."

"Do you?" McCain tipped her head at him.

Slick clicked his tongue again. "He ain't ever give me the time of day, I can tell you that. I'm not saying I deserve it, but heck, I've kept his shit clean for the last two years."

"Do you ever shut up, Sergeant?" Misty bit at him like a proper commander. She _was_ his commander.

No one talked like Slick without being some sort of prideful. It was a dangerous personality to be sure, but he was in good company: with dangerous men and women. His Lucario was like a ghost, following them, five meters behind always. One glance of her shoulder and that was the most excuse she was going to give the Lucario. Out of sight, and out of mind: that was the wish both she and the Lucario wanted.

She threw a thumb over her shoulder in a vague gesture. "He's quiet."

"Yin and Yang." Slick played with his thumbs to demonstrate, circling upon themselves. "I got all the talk, he got all the walk. Ain't that right buddy?!"

No response.

McCain turned around for a moment, trying to see his face past the aviators. Strong jawed, but a weak chin oddly, hidden by a growing beard that was too groomed to have seen much rough action. "What's your name? Didn't catch it."

"Hollande. Don Hollande." There was a growl in his voice: it spoke to a man whose language he spoke now wasn't his first.

"You were assaulted last night?"

There was a hint of hesitation in his voice. Embarrassment perhaps if McCain could gauge. "Look, in truth Gatekeepers posted here are more about keeping Pokémon in, and not people out." he answered.

"Fair enough, but they got you off guard, so I'm going to need a statement from you."

Hollande paused, but shrugged. "You approve of this ma'am?" He looked back to Misty, as did McCain. Misty could only give her a pensive look.

"I'm going to have to send it up to the top." She breathed in frustration. "Tops, I mean. The Gatekeepers have their names classified in government documents."

"Ah, so not the first time they been up to stuff like that?"

It was Misty's turn to shrug. "Maybe. I dunno. When I was sent their duty roster over fax all their names were blacked out."

The roll of McCain's eyes was seen even when she was up front. "Charming."

It was an opening to another system in that cave that they approached, only highlighting how easy it had been to get lost in it. What they really approached however had been…

With his long fingers Hops had been snapping photos, the flash going off disorienting in bursts. When it did go off in the dim light, what was revealed had been even more disorienting:

Crushed, split, destroyed. Halved and quartered and dusted. More Master Balls. A massacre of product that, although to the uninformed, would seem like pure litter, was hardly that:

Depending on who you asked, the Master Ball graveyard had either been priceless, or several million dollars.

100% was worth a million. If McCain found sleeping pills that would 100% work on her, she would've given up half her damn salary, that was how she saw eye to eye with such extravagances, even in this graveyard Hops had been the center of.

A drawn-out whistle, and then another click of the tongue, Hollande's aviators taken off of him like a hat held in mourning. "Someone meant business."

"The hell do you got in here?" Pure confusion. It came from McCain as she twisted around, looking to both Misty and Hollande. Her mind stretched for a legendary Pokémon she knew and wouldn't butcher its pronunciation before her mind settled on one, remembered in her Catholic school's gospel book by her. As Man was made in the image of God, so too had Pokémon been made in the image of: "A Mew?"

Everyone but her and Hops had tensed.

If McCain would've leaned in and seen the Master Balls, she would've recognized the tell-tale sign of Psychic pressure: telekinesis creating ripple patterns that were unable to be made by physical means.

There had been a battle there, and like all battles, there had been a victor.

The protective case on McCain's phone fell in muted clatter as Hops saw something behind them all. He was usually good at protecting McCain. _"You're my sixth sense, you know that?"_ She told him once, having stopped a Muk from swallowing her in Fall City's sewers. Even with six senses Hops could do nothing as something in the shape of a monster levitated behind them all, and he could be nothing but be frozen as the cold came.

It was the cold felt from the electricity in the air, translated to all there like the way flesh aches on a cold floor. It hurt, and when all three of them turned around to confront its source, they came across their mutual friend.

Their presence had, physically, bigger than a man. Maybe Bruno of Elite Four fame might've been a good comparison, but still, the Pokémon was all muscle. Its proportions were all wrong, tail curling from its stomach to the back, the impression of a grown fetus striking all those there as its skin, appearing so very soft, eluded all notions of any sort of gentleness. Purple and pink, its hands were three fingered, balled pads at the end of each. That was obviously not how it interacted with the world however as it floated. Its cold eyes blazed with a striking purple, and of all the people there, it looked right back into McCain as it cast its shadow over her.

She never wanted to put a hand on her gun more than at that very moment, but she knew if she did, she'd die. She'd crumple to the ground just like one of those Master Balls.

Wordless, she took one step back, as if to fully encompass her vision with the being before her.

She'd seen Entei, Suicune, and Raikou in the forests of Fiore at the corner of her eyes, only whenever Lunick was around, as if they'd owed him. She had seen Lugia on her honeymoon in Fula City, emerging from bright blue ocean waves as the city paid tribute to it, it graciously accepting it. She had even touched its stomach, after giving it her offering of (family recipe) a loaf of bread. The legends of that world were tangible, in some fashion. The paintings of the Cro Magnons of the Regis survived to that day, protected by those surviving Regis in fact. Every once and a while, in the city of Alto Mare, the glimmer of a Latias or Latios would be caught on security camera. Team Plasma's Genesect were being hunted down every day by bounty hunters. For all the myth and legend that surrounded some Pokémon, enough of it was true that it made McCain believe that there wasn't anything she couldn't understand in some way. That the mystery of Pokémon could be solved like any case file she had. Her husband had made a career out of it, and so she didn't think herself phased by the unknown (or the Unown).

Standing here however, feet away from the first successful abomination of mankind, made by men and women who had defined her first few months as an officer, she was faced with finality.

Telepathy was a fickle thing, spoken not with sound but with the idea of thoughts and sentences, beamed directly into the mind of the receivers. There had been another Ranger whose partner had been an Abra, and, quite frankly, their ability to conduct conversation had been a creepy source of workplace drama at the station in Fall City.

The back of her neck felt the cold as their words passed by her.

Its mouth didn't move. "In the years since my birth, since I was freed, I made sure to do the best with the life that has been given to me." Male and female voices, without identity, in her head. Indistinct.

One cursory look around and McCain knew it hadn't been lying.

Hollande had lost his breath, only to take some back in before shakily saying: "Helluva task."

It nodded once, folding its arms.

"There would be some in this world who would impose on me however, still. It is… trying." They spoke in deep tones in her head, and, evidently, in Misty's and Hollande's too. She felt the two fingered hand of Hops grab her forearm, reassuringly.

In her boots, McCain made fists with her toes before finally speaking for the both of them:

"I- I heard rumors but I didn't think you lived."

_"Good."_

* * *

**December 24th**

**9:30AM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

Evidence was bagged, questions and statements were collected from the Gatekeepers, but they yielded nothing. And even if there had been something, it was minimal compared to what McCain would learn from a Pokémon born of science and sin:

"**Mewtwo**." She said its given name as he floated over Parker's dead body, its own gaze casted on his uncovered body. They looked up at her when she spoke, and it still chilled her. Misty had probably been more rock solid than Brock in Pewter. She had been used to Mewtwo at this point, far more comfortable with their presence than Hollande and the rest of the Gatekeepers as they kept their gazes held down around him. Just like Misty said, it had become McCain's show, sending a few of them back out to fetch McCain and the coroners. Hopefully Cerulean PD had been up and ready to work that Christmas.

"Yes?" The singular word rocked her brain and everyone around them. It would be impolite to keep the psychic talk hidden in plain sight.

"What happened here?" This was the first she asked of them. The Gatekeepers didn't dare ask, but some had silently guessed.

Its nostrils barely moved as it breathed, speaking again to her. "Do you know why I'm here?" Answering with a question had never been a good start.

"No." She entertained them.

It wore a tattered cape around their shoulders, beneath that: a simple shoulder bag. They didn't reach into it, but its psychic powers drew six objects from it all the same.

Six Pokéballs, old and worn. Parker's. They came out of the bag, only to float before McCain as she grabbed each one. For a moment, she considered releasing all of them to grab their side of the story, but Pokémon in Pokéballs weren't exactly the most lucid or coherent of witnesses. Besides, she had empathy. Empathy enough not to release them before the body of their loving trainer. Handing them off to Hops he had been more than happy to bag them. The Pokémon around had known exactly what Mewtwo was capable of.

"In this cave, I have made a home for those like me." Emphasis lain in their last words. Like _it._ "Those who can no longer live, peacefully, might find solace here with me and those that have been healed."

Like a snowball, slow albeit, McCain had settled into talking with the myth before her, notepad up and out, her Styler's recorder turned off: useless when it came to conversation like this. "I know what type of Pokémon you speak of. I've faced them before."

"Have you?"

It wasn't her place to be interrogated. "What happened here, Mewtwo?"

Hollande seemed to flinch at how McCain spoke to it. As if he knew something she didn't, or he respected the Pokémon too much to hear her speak like that.

Mewtwo did nothing however, looking off into the cave before returning its steel gaze at her.

"Late evening, yesterday, one of my scouts saw… him, this Pokémon Ranger, running into the cave. He was screaming, trying to warn us."

Parker's body had its white sheet returned to him, awaiting the coroner. "About what?" McCain looked to Parker, expecting him to answer almost.

"He knew I was here." There was concern, if McCain could place it, in its voice. "He was warning me that people were coming for me."

"Coming?"

The evidence bags of Master Balls had been too much for McCain to carry on her, instead left besides Parker's body.

"To catch." Clarification, and it made sense. "But I paid no heed immediately. My goal was to hide the other Pokémon here."

"Are they safe?" Mewtwo tilted its head at her. It was a question they didn't expect.

"Hidden. I wish for you to leave this cave as soon as possible. This… undue stress is not good for some of those here."

She shook her head, her sensibilities as a cop returning to her. "Can't do that, this is a crime scene. We have to proceed at all due speed, so who knows how long this'll take."

"We'll be out of your hair as fast as we can." Misty had cut in, a stern look shot at McCain. "I'm sorry, Ranger, but there is a way things work here. None of us are supposed to be this deep and, well, we're guests." Fear? Was that fear in her voice?

The pen in McCain's hand stopped. The note on the destroyed Master Balls underlined, three times. "You sound like you understand fully that this Pokémon here can protect itself Gym Leader." She rose her voice at Misty before turning back to Mewtwo. "And if what I know is true about you… What did you have to worry about with these men?"

Implications upon implications. McCain didn't give a crap about what Mewtwo was putting down with a dead Ranger at their feet, even if she knew that they knew what it was like to kill. She had never killed in revenge. The Pokémon before her? They were accused of doing so, a long time ago.

There was a sizing up happening, between a woman who had stared down Tyranitar and lived and a Pokémon whose very existence meant that mankind could play god. "The men came in behind him. I never got a good look at them, but some of my scouts, they were familiar to them."

"Familiar?" McCain shook her head, returning on track. "We have any descri-"

_ "Team Rocket."_

McCain's eyes widened as her head snapped up from her pad. "Are you-"

Images were beamed into her head. Shared images. Blurry, but distinct. Ski masks.

Black uniforms, red Rs. Tacky, but it meant something to some. Enough that they went out and did their deeds in them: a message, and a symbol, rolled up to intimidate all.

She saw it as one of them did it: from the eyes of a Pokémon. And yet she asked-

"Was what I just saw reliable?" She blinked back into her own vision, she figuring it probably wasn't permissible in court. "I know some of the Pokémon here were abused by Rocket. Any men in black could trigger false memories."

Mewtwo paused. Obviously, it had never been under the questioning of the authorities. This wasn't the first time she had to press a Pokémon though. As far as Bad Cop/Good Cop routines went, she was the Rangers only Bad Cop on hand who had experience, at least at her station.

"I did not see them myself, at least, at a distance where I could look at them and confirm they were who they were."

"No one else was close enough?"

"We keep away from all humans who do come in here." The Pokémon warily looked at the Gatekeepers, at Misty, and then, finally, at McCain. "The less they see of us, the better. If the world knew who lived here, people like the One who Came Before would come and challenge us all. They would not like what we'd do."

"There was someone else?"

Ancient history. "Red." Misty spoke. "We're lucky it was him. He came in to catch him. Used a Master Ball too. I think Mr. Silph awarded him one when he broke Giovanni's siege on the tower a few years back."

Mewtwo dipped deep into his lungs to speak. "It's why I know what to do."

A long time ago, in another era perhaps, a young Pokémon trainer went by the name of Red. Many trainers had tried to beat him and that many trainers were cast down in defeat. He was a curious case, a man of few words now, and less when he first started out. He was a good man, as far as anyone could tell though. It was all sport for him, and that meant rolling in one day to Cerulean Caves on the heels of a rumor that he had picked up during his beatdown of Rocket. Mewtwo had come here, and, using a Master Ball, caught them.

Only to release them minutes later.

That drive, to prove to yourself that you could do it, it was admirable. Though how it manifested in Red, it was a force of nature.

Perhaps that's why McCain had been the way she was: chip on her shoulder from a delinquent childhood, wanting to prove to the world she could be the best damn cop there was, even if it meant she killed someone.

"So you weren't close enough to ID but were able to crush their balls, is that right?"

She was hesitant to write down Mewtwo at all in her notes. She could keep secrets, she had discretion. _Psychic Pokémon involved, _was what she wrote instead.

"From the dark. They were distracted. Surrounded him where you found the debris. I took my opportunity to minimize danger to my own." When a Pokéball explodes, it wasn't pretty. A pop, some glass and shrapnel. Like many flash grenades she'd use throughout the years when the door hinges were blown off and the shotgun was used as a key. If Parker was surrounded when the balls went off he could've fought his way out, scooping up evidence.

"He was shot to death." Her pen poked paper. "If they had him surrounded why didn't they shoot him there?"

"They didn't have guns." Mewtwo stressed.

"Any Pokémon?"

"No, just themselves and their balls."

"So when he ran then they decided to shoot him in the back?" Something didn't add up. "And, I think most pressing of all, you didn't do anything to stop it!" Her voice rose like a crescendo, echoing throughout that cavern.

She had no tolerance for the inept, for those who would standby as evil did its way with the world. Pokémon or man, it didn't matter, there was a choice that had to be taken and some people knowingly did not choose at all.

He was a coward.

"I'm not." Their hands curled into a version of a fist. They read her mind.

"You let a man die."

The world caved in on all of them. Not physically, but mentally. The pressure of talking like this and what was being said flooring all those there. It was a privilege to be there, Hollande would say. To be in the presence of legends, and yet McCain showed this kind of gall. Misty pocketed her hands, only to grace her own Pokéballs. She felt a fight coming on, between a headstrong woman and a Pokémon who could crush her with its mind.

She meant no harm though. She was just doing her job. Even Mewtwo felt it as her thicker eyebrows curved down.

"You, you are a Pokémon Ranger, yes?" McCain nodded, thumbing her notepad away as they spoke to her. "You promote life and harmony between man and Pokémon, and yet you carry that."

She felt the tug, her jacket making way as her pistol levitated out, held by a blue film. Telekinesis, coming from the Mewtwo. She, in a yelp, grasped back at it, but the unseen force took it away until it had been in reach of Mewtwo itself.

The Gatekeepers had tensed, their Pokémon and their weapons held and ready.

Its hands were never meant to held a gun, but it rested in its palm, the item looking as if a toy.

"Hey! The hell do you think you're-?!"

The gun exploded. Not in fire or in a concussion, but part-by-part. Like a blow-up diagram she had seen of machinery meant to designate part numbers and what, exactly, had been broken. Nowadays it had been as easy as letting a Rotom hijack said machine and diagnose what was wrong, but Professor Hastings had always seen to it that a Ranger knew how to disassemble and reassemble their Styler by hand in the case of field malfunction. The same thing went for her gun as the pieces levitated in air, each being observed by Mewtwo.

"To promote peace, you must carry something meant to bring death?" There was judgement in its voice, but yet still McCain stepped forward, even as she felt a tug by her Grovyle, begging her not to.

She answered this question before, a decade younger. Even after everything she had done, she still held onto it. "It is a failure if I do use this thing."

"Hm?"

There was a calmness in her voice. A peace that he wanted to perpetrate himself to those he cared for. "A failure, in the world, the situation, the people. I don't _want _to use it. But sometimes I have to." There was solemnness in her words. Words that carried weight. "I deal with bad people who do bad things."

"Like create me?"

McCain scrunched her nose. "Yeah. Like create you."

The parts of her pistol floated in the air, used as a meditation perhaps.

"Those bad people came for me."

"I know."

"I could've stopped them."

"Know you could've."

"But I've killed before, and I told myself I'd _**never**_ do that again."

They were born on the Cinnabar Islands, off the coast of that region. Team Rocket funding some yet to be known party into R&D of a manmade Pokémon of flesh. The research site went up in flames, and about a month after the entire island was buried beneath a volcanic eruption. Violence was this Pokémon's mother; the artificiality of going against nature itself being its nature. Several dead had been found, burnt to a crisp inside that lab. The identity of Mewtwo brought forward into the world by some leak memos seized by the police following Rocket's downfall.

In another life, McCain might've entertained trying, somehow, to press charges toward this being before her, but didn't kid herself now. The idea of Mewtwo killing those who created it had been a sympathetic thought, if not realistic, but again even when it came to animals, there needed to be proof.

In any case, the Mewtwo before her now had lived a life, experienced itself and the world, and was at peace with it in some regard. At least to the regard that made them more about rehabilitation than revenge.

"You did, by not stepping in and saving Parker." It was an accusation. More than that, it was true.

"I had my friends to take care of." He was ashamed, but he knew his priorities.

McCain pocketed her hands. "I know." It was said with understanding, a rock by her feet kicked at and sent down range, eyes drawn to her feet. She let out a grunt in aggravation, blowing hot air out of her nose. "If you were a man, you know I'd be reacting differently, to all this."

Mewtwo looked down at her, unscrupulous eyes still looking her over. Like the eyes of God, judging her. It was judgement that defeated people. She remembered that quote from some book, long ago, mopping about in the library. She didn't judge herself, and she didn't take the judgement of those well. To be in law enforcement meant to understand that the laws of society necessitated the division of power that she had a hand in. She was not judge, jury, or executioner. She had just served the laws of the people, for the people.

She didn't serve Mewtwo; she didn't care for what they thought of her.

There was a murder in their cave and she had been called to solve it. She owed it to another Ranger.

She held out her hand. "My gun?" Slowly, slowly, the gun returned to itself, piece by piece in his palm first. "And what happened? After you blew the balls?"

Floating back to her, her pistol was held in her grip, grasping it from the air. She cycled one round by hand, dropping the mag before thumbing in the racked round in the top, inserting it back in as she sent the slide forward, reholstering. Mewtwo had been the only other Pokémon to touch her gun. Hops knew how to use it, as much of an oddity as that was. He had fingers, and was always by her side. It made sense.

"He ran to here. Shots came and hit him the back. I saw him die, I didn't see the shooter. They didn't touch his body." Ground zero was Parker's place of death, and it felt like a hole that McCain was sinking into. Hops kept his Pokémon in their capsules, safe. "I only removed his Pokémon discretely. They came in here, looked around, and then they left. By the time they left I had sent one of my scouts to… him."

Hollande raised his hand, gesturing to his eye. "And you know how I was. After that they just set off the motion trackers and the lot of us came running, woke me up, and we found him watching the body when we got here." It was the first the Gatekeepers and Misty were hearing of the fact they were Rocket grunts. "God damn. I might as well retire, getting knocked out by a Rocketeer."

Misty thumbed her chin, concern on her face. "We haven't had a report on Team Rocket for years. Not since Archer was nabbed in Goldenrod." Mewtwo agreed with her.

"Yes. I concur with Parker's warning. They knew I was here."

"Someone can't keep a secret then." McCain looked to the Gatekeepers, they not catching what she meant. She would need their names and history. Anyone who knew Mewtwo's existence would be combed over. The very idea of that- She paused. This case really did go to the top.

Mewtwo stirred, floating, ever so slightly, toward McCain. Hops had reappeared suddenly, in front of McCain, between her and it. Protection. This Pokémon saw fit that McCain would not be harmed, and in that moment, it fell victim to an entire conversation in a flash, mind and mind connected as McCain saw Hops lock up and then soften his stance.

Mewtwo's eyes changed their gaze at her. They knew now what to expect of her.

Hops nodded to a question unheard by anyone but him and Mewtwo, and that was that.

"I trust you'll keep my presence, and my intentions here, a secret?" No one had heard it but her and Hops.

McCain's hand reached for her heart, her palm pressing on it, her face easing and placating. Bad cop was a face she put on, not who she was. She was a Pokémon Ranger for a reason. _"I promise."_ She meant it. Meant it enough to not say it, but think it. He understood. _"This is a good thing you have going here, I wouldn't do anything to bring this place harm or trouble. Not without the due process of the law."_

The first hint of any facial movement on Mewtwo: a raise of their eyebrow. "Tell me, in all of your years doing what you do, does the law apply equally to us?"

_"All I know is that a bullet will me as easily it'll kill you. It's that equality I like to think about."_

Mewtwo paused. Looking at her. Looking at her as if she were a Pokémon herself. She had done wrong, like many of the Pokémon there, but there was an old saying an Arbok among his care liked to say to those who couldn't forgive themselves: "Pokémon do bad things because master bad. Pokémon not bad." Maybe it was the same for any master-servant relationship. Maybe McCain would've been one of his own, in another life, if her soul had been in a different body. It liked to think souls were the only thing the scientists of Rocket did not put in them; that it was theirs to take care of, to build.

"Please leave this place, as soon as you can." As ghostly as they appeared, it had disappeared in a flash, melting away into the air. With one last word however, they had their empathy. "I'm sorry for your loss. Preston Parker was a good man."

As if it knew him, McCain sourly thought before mentally hitting herself. Cynicism had no place in her life now, but it came back like serotonin in her brain, automatic, without regard to how it happened.

Mewtwo was right though. Parker was a good man.

She looked down. Her hands had their way with the notepad and she hadn't even known: writing out enough to work with again.

With one last sweep visually, she knew where the rest lay: not here at least. Forensics would sweep for the bullets and anything they'd miss. She had leads to follow and people to report to.

"Misty?"

"Yes Missus McCain?'

"It's Jain. And I'm going to need signed statements from all of you. Don't give a shit about what's up top, I need it right here, right now. I might not be able to take a statement from Mewtwo, but everyone can corroborate what he said here together." She ripped out pages from her notepad, walking around, shoving a paper in each person's hands. There were no immediate complaints, but soon enough she heard the scoffs.

"You think this'll hold in court? Seems rather ramshackle."

"Got a reason why you don't want to be on the record?"

One of the Gatekeepers whistled at McCain's persistence and she marked it well. These people operated higher than most. It was in her experience though that the law was the common denominator.

* * *

**December 24th**

**10:42 AM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

McCain had been escorted out, and the walk back had been a breeze, her mind barely coherent as she reviewed her notes. Misty and Hollande walked her out, on the way, passing by Cerulean PD going in the opposite direction. Hops had hung onto her back, having had enough of the cold stone floor and wanting her body heat instead. He deserved it, as competent a partner he had been.

Her hands had been full and what they had been full with was an ugly combination of murder and the reemergence of Team Rocket of some form apparently. There had been no chatter in any organization about them as far as McCain would remember, and their MO here, it seemed… rough. Rocketeers who had been hunted down following Silph Co.. had resorted to violence, to weapons, but none had done so just to murder a man like had happened here.

"Saw your piece, Ranger." She was brought out of her thoughts.

"Hm?"

Hollande gestured to her holster hidden by her jacket. "Your gun. I don't carry a pistol, but I can tell you take care of yours. Sexy. Wood grips and all."

"Huh, yeah." She glanced down at his hip, and where there would usually be a pistol there was a cut down shotgun. She recognized the sort. A "Masterkey" as they would call it for reasons that included locks and buckshot. His rifle had been rifle caliber, same as the one she still lugged on her back. It was scary to her how natural the feeling was to have one on her again. "Is it true, like she say?" McCain gestured to Misty, "You guys don't use them much."

"Not at liberty to say Ranger." He shrugged, and only then as he moved his hands did his sleeve ride up, oddly colored shotgun shells held by a bracer on his forearm. One had been missing.

When they arrived the sun had been bright, but not warm. The cold nip of winter was there despite the greenery around. It especially hadn't been warm as Chief Sevson approached them again.

"See what I mean now?" He tilted his head at her.

She nodded respectfully at him. He was right. "Yeah."

Misty let the sun and the milky blue sky take her in, breathing in fresh air. Out of that darkness she resumed her youthful energy, stretching her arms as she wiped them dry from dust and wet, done with crawling on rocks and ledges for a while. "Cerulean PD and your men have it, Chief Sevson?"

He crossed his arms across his chest, curtly pursing his lips. "We've got it, Miss Williams."

There was a smile of relief on her face. "Okay. I've got a Christmas show at the gym tonight and I have to get ready for that. Can't really deviate my schedule, ya know?"

A small hand was offered back out to all around, Sevson first, then Hollande, lastly McCain. "It was nice to meet you Jain. Thank you for coming down here."

"My pleasure." She lied, taking her hand. Misty's other hand went up to Hops, lazily dozing, his cheek rubbed and he purring graciously.

"If you're every around, just uh, give my ticket people one of these." Misty struggled in her back pocket to flip out her wallet. Three slips of paper with "VIP" on them and the logo of her gym. "You, the Hubby, and Hops, if you ever want to come see one of my shows. Promise I'm alright, compared to my sisters."

An amused breath came out of McCain as she held the tickets in her hand. "I don't doubt it. Thank you."

Again, the Gym Leader's hand went into the back of her pants, drawing a Pokéball, Golduck called out and ready. "He's my ride across the river." She flashed a peace sign as she stepped away, back into the brush. "Again! Merry Christmas!"

Faintly Hops had given her a wave off, the daze of stepping out of a cave coming through McCain's mind like a bad hangover. When her mind cleared the mouth of the cave had picked up activity, tents and awnings put out as men and women in blue with their Pokémon set up for a quick operation to recover Parker's body and survey the site. "What's Celadon PD doing here, Sevson?"

Sevson thumbed back to the trees where they came from hours ago. "I was hitching a ride last night with Cerulean PD after I attended the usual Holiday Banquet they hold for the other PDs. Gatekeepers rose us on the horn and I checked it out. Had a few of my guys come down here to establish this site and, well, it was convenient when it was reported that a Ranger was dead that you were in my department."

McCain paused, taking Sevson by the shoulder and pressing. "You know about _who_ is in there, right?"

_"Yeah."_ Sevson seemed distant as he shook her off, holding on that word. "Not everyone here does, so uh, keep your mouth shut. Follow me."

Before she followed McCain turned back to Hollande, the man on orders to return back into the cave upon dropping her off. He tipped his head at her, the flash of his eyes, bruise and all, seen by her. He clicked his tongue, speaking in his sing-song voice. "Stay warm, Ranger."

"Get your eye checked up on. I hear Nurse Joy knows how to treat people too, you know."

A glob of spit was thrown toward the ground by the Gatekeeper. "Sayonara." His back was turned to her, disappearing back into the dark.

* * *

**_December 24th_**

**_11:03 AM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time_**

There was a tent for the Celadon PD set up and, just a moment before she stepped in, she had wondered if anyone was still in the department and on call for this. Obviously no one in the tent had been happy being deployed on Christmas, but there cheer was built up just a little as they saw an old friend step through.

In truth only three or so of the dozen people from Celadon PD had recognized her, but that was all she could handle right now.

"Looks like the Ghost of Christmas Past has come for us." McCain faintly smiled as one of the rookies turned beat cop she knew called her out.

"Hey Jimmy." She looked around and saw the faces that knew her. "Rose. Packie."

They all went for the handshake or hug but Sevson warded them off. The tent had laptops, maps of the cave, theories on dry erase white boards of diagrams of the crime scene deep within the caves. It didn't concern her at the moment. She had enough of a lead to go hunting already and, if there was anything important, they'd ring her probably.

Sevson patted the desk. "We're putting you in charge. Detective work. Homicide desk. What you always wanted, right?"

A map of the Kanto region and a list of known Rocketeers still alive or seemingly not causing trouble had been up. That's where Sevson led her too, the table in the center of the tent as the rest had their own stations and busy work to do. This kind of gross surveillance was one of the reasons why she left the department: listing out names and people, children of said people and acquaintances on sticky notes. Addresses, towns, jobs and occupations, all spelled out with their names and photos if they had them. With a Rocket related-case in play the PDs of Kanto weren't messing around, for good reason. They didn't want a rookie trainer upstaging them again, after all.

This wasn't the way however.

"Not homicide." McCain spit out. Hops had been more than happy to exchange pleasantries with former "aunts and uncles" as they were to him. The department always treated him well. Looking over the map the information overload had been all encompassing, too much and in the wrong direction in her opinion. They started in broad strokes while she had something a little more intimate.

There was a detail, on those Master Balls, which had stuck in her mind. Though her mind was what it looked like if shit really did hit the fan though. Maybe it was the melodic typing on one of the laptop keyboards that brought her back from her investigative thoughts. When they were together in the same bed, her husband often worked on his laptop late into the night, the rhythm her lullaby.

What was important was the case in front of her, and she said it aloud.

"So a Pokémon Ranger gets shot while running away from thugs with Master Balls in the middle of what is essentially a Indigo League black site, all in the presence of a Pokémon that the entire world thinks is either dead or never existed at all, and said Pokémon's testimony says Rocket grunts came in here with a bunch of these Master Balls to capture him." The Ranger sat in the hardly comfortable plastic chair by the table, her feet only now beginning to ache as she recounted what exactly she was in. She had hardly gotten any sleep on the flight over and thus she was about eight hours into a day that started at 3AM, having departed Fiore at midnight.

Jet lag hadn't even hit her yet and she was looking for it over her shoulder as if she was in witness protection.

"Coffee?"

She waved off Sevson as he offered a paper cup. "Nah. Messes with my stomach. Got any candy or some shit?"

He shook his head. Best he could offer was a donut, and, in that moment, she had appreciated being back in the jurisdiction of cops as she bit into the much too cold pastry. It tasted like the station still used the same doughnut guy after all these years. There were certain aspects of the job she missed: the fact her work area was constrained to only Celadon and not an entire damned region, the bad coffee and the familiarity of her beat lulling her into a comfortable existence. Celadon had never been a particularly dangerous place, but there was always flare ups between the casino, the department store, and just youths that she used to be mucking about bored.

That's how it was during her first two years on the job that is. Before Rocket changed it forever.

She munched on her donut as Sevson looked at some of his geared-up men enter the cave, escorted by the Gatekeepers. "No matter what the fuck I do I always end up cleaning up old Giovanni's mess." He sputtered, less than happy and nursing his own coffee.

Giovanni was sitting pretty in some way-too luxurious cell in a prison in Orre. The Orrians knew how to hold a prisoner, and had been half a world away, so he had been transferred there after some tricky judicial crafting that found that Giovanni routed illegal funds through a charity in the region. It worked out well enough: keeping him away from his followers.

Not that there had been that many left, McCain presumed until today.

When Rocket fell apart for the first time following the Silph Co. takeover, PDs throughout the Kanto region had mobilized to track down any grunts involved and trying to lay low before they disappeared into the populace. The fear, a fear that had been proven right years later when Rocket reorganized in Johto, was that Rocket would simply lay in wait until Giovanni (or some other figurehead) would come about to lead them. Chief Sevson among others had sought to pre-emptively strike.

The first time McCain was involved in it had been before Silph Co., when Celadon's beloved Game Corner was revealed to be a front for Rocket. When all was said and done by a good Samaritan the world would eventually come to know as Red, the facility beneath still needed to be cleared and any Rocketeer left down there had been like a cornered Rattata.

One crash course in gun handling later and McCain had been pressed into service as the first of Celadon's City new SWAT division, going down into that facility with nothing but a helmet, Kevlar vest, and a shotgun that had been old enough to know what the world before her parents had been like.

Everything had gone down hill from there. New problems arose after Rocket fell, crime that necessitated a role that she had fallen into came up more and more as violent crime skyrocketed because of ex-Rocket grunts. Sooner, rather than alter, she had become Captain to a SWAT division nearly a dozen strong for a jurisdiction that covered both Celadon and Saffron in a joint task force.

Her first kills had been remembered: her first kill on a man, first kill on a woman, and first kill on a Pokémon. She had hardly believed she was capable of it, but in each case, she was in the right according to those who were to judge.

Perhaps it was the problem she had, becoming a veteran SWAT operator, that led her to eventually leave; that what happened during the last raids had only been a breaking point on top of a cancer.

"No-knock raids tend to create more messes than it cleans up, you know." She was due the spite, five years later and in a mess she didn't want to be in.

For all the pundits on the news media would say about the militarization of police, she could offer no rebuttal. She had been the reason why it happened: she proved it a solution. That's why she had been flown out every other week it seemed when she was in the Celadon PD to conferences around the world to talk and elaborate on how exactly she was so effective at kicking down doors and blasting perps.

She had been in the eye of the news as the news three times in her life: the first time it had been as a child, having broken into Erica's gym on a dare. The second time it had been because she, as the same person, had become one of the youngest people to ever enroll in Kanto's Police Academy, becoming a rising star in the ranks of Celadon PD. The last time had been on a much more sorrowful note.

"You're the one that shot them, McCain." The Chief reminded her of why she had left, all those years ago.

"Piss off, Sevson." He shrugged at her bite.

"I'd love to but I have a job to do, as do you." He flipped open a paper folder and looked into it. "The only way any of the agencies or entities that have a hand in this would be happy is if you were on the case. And last I heard from this Lunick guy, he says you're all ours."

She groaned again, hand running down her face as the weight of her holster made her slump in her chair. Distantly someone was playing Christmas music too loud in their headphones.

It wasn't the most beautiful time of year, and all she wanted was peace in her life.

_Why the hell did you become a Ranger then?! _Her inner monologue, combined with a conscience that had never rewarded her for anything.

_So I could find it, that's why! _She answered back. The answer she had to live with.

Yes. She did have a job to do. "Did we comb the area around? Motion sensors catch anything?"

"Gatekeepers and the Indigo League are keeping that and anything related under wraps for now. "Processing" they say, but they're just playing hard to get." Sevson responded. "Something they don't want us to know perhaps?"

McCain shook her head, finishing her doughnut. "The only reason why Mewtwo is known to exist to the public, _to me even_, is because Cinnabar PD leaked documents on it. They might have a reason why they're keeping stuff like this close to chest." She might've said that too loud as some in the tent did a double take, Sevson putting a finger to his lips quieting her.

She only flicked him off.

Sevson gruffed, pulling a chair himself as he traced his eyes across known Rocket assets across Kanto and Johto on that laminated map on the table. "You know the PDs have changed since then. We aren't just a bunch of Jennys and volunteers. _**You made sure of that**_."

She should've asked for coffee just so she could throw it in his face.

There were men like Sevson in that world that she, didn't exactly despise on principle, but could find herself being opposed to on a personal level. No one would ever contest them of not doing their jobs. It took only someone who had been on the inside however to know if what they did to do their job was wrong though. A true perspective: one that McCain, in this insistence, knew best.

"Don't like the Gatekeepers here." She started, flipping through her notes, listing weapons they had on them. No one carried an SMG or a pistol so she didn't exactly think they did it, as extreme a thought that was. "Who gets chosen for the job of defending something like this cave, and gets knocked out by a punch?"

"They're only human, and to be frank, this seems like a cushy gig. Run off curious trainers and anyone else who wanders here and get paid what I only assume is a lot from the Indigo League."

"They ain't recruiting criminals, are they? Soldiers from defense forces?" That side of the planet hadn't had an operating military in years. Self-defense forces in the case of another battle between Gods, like in Hoenn, sure. But actual militaries? No need.

Sevson threw his hands up. "Wish I could tell you McCain, but they're milky. Still, if they had a hand in this I would imagine the Indigo League is calling up the International Police and investigating it internally. We'll get the scraps."

"Right. That still leaves the bunch of supposed Rocket grunts and the Master Balls."

"Black is a popular color if that's what you're saying. Anyone can wear black and call themselves a Rocket thug." Sevson had spoken truth.

She had a point back. "Not everyone can just throw Master Balls. I counted at least twenty. I didn't even know that much existed." That's where her mind concentrated: on those balls. Thank God Red had already did that one-trick-Ponyta on Mewtwo for him to know the "danger" of them.

Sevson nodded. "I heard some of the details from the Gatekeepers radio chatter. But go on about that."

"I saw 'em Chief. Master Balls. No IDs. Someone must've run a private line with Silph Co. machinery… and the material and money needed to pop out that many? It smells foul as hell."

"Yeah."

For a moment they paused. McCain really had to think about it, about where Master Balls had come from… about where Red had gotten his apparently.

"Hey! Packie!" He was still Celadon PD's historian hopefully, McCain yelling out to him as he was chatting and catching up with Hops.

The two looked over. "Ye? What'cha need Captain?"

She chuckled as she walked over. It'd been years since she was called that.

"Can you bring up the post-action debrief on the Silph Co. Tower raid? Did Rocket grab anything on the way out? Those we didn't catch that is?"

The short man had nodded, going to his laptop as Hops returned to her, sipping on a coffee himself. She had given her Grovyle an eyebrow raise, but he shrugged. She could grill him for sipping that shit later.

Sevson tapped his finger across his cheek, looking at the Rocketeers in the wild along with McCain's train of thought. He knew what she was implying. "None of these fine folks here, the ones that participated in the Silph Co. hit grabbed much. Asides from a few stray items that weren't bolted down, some loose change, money and valuables that were on the hostages."

Rocket was sloppy, first time through. A lot of hostages ran before they could be locked down. In the end only a few floors were taken by Rocket. No firearms, just Pokémon and threats. McCain remembered watching the siege at home. She remembered with as much exasperation as anyone that a young boy was reported in saving the day.

"…But we did see tampering with the inner vault." Packie pointed out.

"A vault?" McCain leaned her chair over to get a look at the document on Packie's computer. He still stank like shit but he had made a side gig out of helping the region's main professor on his ranch in Pallet Town with his Tauros, so he smelled bad for a reason. A god reason at that. The police department outside of the SWAT division had been the same, good-natured people as always, and sometimes McCain wished she remained with them. Responsibility had shoved something else in her lap though.

"Yeah." An eraser end of a pencil poked at archive footage, a red-haired woman standing before a large, embedded vault near the top of the tower, baked into the structure itself. She was dressed in white, her grunts surrounding her poking at electronics, consoles, and the vault itself to see if there was any give. Unfortunately, the design had been several tons of steel forming into a door that was like revolving door, locked in place by- "Electromagnetic locks hooked up to the city grid, backed up by seven different other security failsafes and measures."

"Who's the broad? Seems familiar." McCain referenced the woman.

Sevson answered with familiarity. "She was a part of Archer's partial revival in Johto. One of Rocket's main executives. Evidence points toward her being Giovanni's main squeeze."

"Name would be nice." That's what she was looking for.

"Ariana Del Lobo."

"She on that list?" McCain thumbed back to the surveillance map.

Sevson coughed, amused, and then annoyed. "She cut a deal with Goldenrod PD, and is in witness protection. We ain't got a read on her."

"Witness protection?" It was an odd idea. She'd never heard of one of Rocket cutting one. Even the lowest grunt, when caught, didn't have enough pull to be worth it.

"Yeah. Bitch's lucky, I can tell you that."

A dead end then, at least for now. Next came the vault and the reason she asked in the first place. "We ever learn what was in there?"

Packie shook his head, glancing at some of the written documents. "They never made it in, and we didn't have a reason to go looking. Evidence still points Giovanni taking over because Mr. Silph was withholding research on, well, some sort of black project we still don't have the warrant to ask about, related to Cinnabar Island. Maybe it was Mewtwo, who knows."

Mewtwo did, but then again no one in there seemed to know as McCain glanced back and Sevson held a finger to his lips again. Maybe Rocket had got a contact back in Silph, and the vault carried a run of Master Balls that weren't on the record. Maybe the original press for them. Maybe something egregiously illegal regardless, Rocket seemed awfully interested in it, only leaving it when Giovanni made the call to abandon and scatter the building.

In that glance he held with her, Sevson saw something more however. He was a detective after all, nearly three decades into it. He remembered who McCain was.

"Your husband, he still works for Silph Co., right?"

Daniel McCain. Danny. Childhood friends. People knew how that story went the second that phrase came out either of their mouths. He spent his younger years as a trainer in the Kanto region before he was hired as a field consultant by Silph, and then, finally, a researcher with a PokéDex. This was the same time McCain left for Fiore.

They married young. At 21. They felt it right then, and they still felt it right now, regardless of… difficulties, in the last few years.

Mentally, she kicked herself, this was the first time back in the region in nearly half a year and it had been for work, not for him. She hadn't even thought of visiting him now that she was there.

Hops seemed annoyed at the mention of him, but McCain, she softened, just the smallest of nods. "No one has the tech to make Pokéballs, McCain, with Silph knowing. They're a big enough company for something like that to happen without the higher ups knowing. Maybe some corrupt managers." He knew exactly what he was asking her without saying outright. "Whatever happens here, I think Silph is a good place to start. Get a read on those Master Balls. Someone's gotta know."

McCain raised an accused eyebrow on behalf of her husband. "And you want me to use my husband to get in?"

Sevson shrugged. "Good suggestion."

It was all too convenient that she was here now, that she was called. If she wasn't on the table before, she would've been now. She was a Christmas gift bundled up for Kanto's law enforcement and she couldn't be more aggravated by it and how it manifested.

Still, her job was her job, so she swallowed the spit in her mouth and did it. "Am I working this case as a cop, or as a Ranger? Because as far as I care I'm not at liberty to be a cop anymore and I have no jurisdiction here."

She patted Packie's shoulder as she broke off from him to in front of Sevson.

"That'd be true, but consider yourself deputized." A gleaming object was thrown at her, the shape of a shield, the size of her palm. She knew what it was by the way it felt in her palm, knicks she hadn't felt in years on her finger tips. She looked at the slice of metal in her hand, the emblem of a Pidgeotto framed by the words: CELADON POLICE DEPARTMENT across the top, ORGANIZED CRIME DIVISION along the bottom. The numbers on the badge: 5921. Before she could ask why he still had it: "We keep it framed in the Academy for new SWAT rooks usually."

She rolled her eyes. "Lovely." Pocketing the old item into her wallet, where it had ridden all those years ago, she got started. "Why is this out, anyway?" She motioned at the table and the map.

"We're going to check up back with them, after we're done here, see if they know anything while you work the Silph angle. Call into the station for reporting and updates, our secretary is still Amber-Mae… Do you remember how to be a cop?"

It was an insulting question but he didn't fault her old chief in asking. "I didn't bag up half the crime scene without knowing what to do, Chief."

"I'm glad to hear. That helicopter pilot will take you where you want. Welcome back to the fold, McCain. Get busy and stay out of my sight."

And she wasn't too happy about it, running her hands through her hair as she was drowned in the old business. She could have a tantrum later, in whatever hotel room she could get. She was going to write off a good amount of stuff as business expenses under Sevson's name as some petty payback, but whatever the case, she owed it to Parker and the Rangers as a whole. That reminded her…

When she walked out of the tent, destination in mind, parting words kept her bitter: "And McCain! Merry Christmas."

* * *

Danny. Her Danny.

The statement on Yin and Yang earlier from Hollande about him and his Lucario reminded her about what kind of relationship she had with Danny. As kids, his family often came into her family's diner for weekend breakfast, and, sooner rather than later, the two looked forward to those days where they could hang out. He went to the public schooling system while she was stuck in Catholic school, and quite frankly it showed with both of them: the freedom Danny had in his education was reflected in his, as she joked with him often as a child "dorkiness". She said that all while in a hoodie too big and a cap on her head that was tilted sideways like any number of cholos, she, at the time, tried to emulate. It was a reaction to being tied down and uniformed up by a school who held her too close to their regulations.

And yet, despite it all, he stuck with her. She hung out with all the wrong people, sans him, and in the end that was what counted for her as the cops nailed her for breaking and entering into Erika's Gym and he alone stayed to console her after the fact.

Opposites attract had been how many a misguided observant would describe how a domestic abuse victim had stuck with their domestic abuser. She would disagree with it entirely, but had her asterisk thrown on it: Opposites were _attractive_.

For her, it meant that his measured steadiness when it came to her had been soothing to her fiery mean streak. He cared for her, and, for that, she loved him back that would only make sense, to her, if she had an entire story to describe it.

This hadn't been that story however.

This hadn't meant he was bone dead boring however. When he battled with his Pokémon, he matched her intensity.

"_What do you see in me?"_ She asked the quiet night after they both slipped out of their respective senior proms. For her, she hadn't been allowed to take a male date, and for Danny, he wouldn't take anyone but her, but wasn't allowed to bring someone from out of his school. Dolled up to the nines in a black dress that sparkled, he couldn't have been more of a sap with his answers as they laid on a secluded patch of woods on Route 16.

"_All the stars, for the rest of my life." _She had poked a hard finger into his chest as she stifled a laugh. So he had gotten straight to the point afterwards after their giggling: "_You amaze me with how far you've come, for yourself, and, I like to think, for me-"_

She might've ended up a thug, susceptible into recruitment into Rocket if she had gone down the path she did without him, after she was released from the station and promptly grounded, awaiting for the community service that would result in her coming to care for Hops. That is if it hadn't been for him, despite his "dorkiness", hop the roofs of Celadon just to climb onto her fire escape window and tearfully break down to her about how much he worried for her. _That had been when they were both ten,_ of all things.

They were eighteen when the declaration happened.

She held his face, silent tears running across warm cheeks on both ends. "_It is. Almost all of it. For you. I love you."_

"_I love you." _He said in response as they both lain on grass that was far too comfortable to be real (maybe the cinnamon whiskey she had smuggled from the diner had helped that). She smushed her forehead into his own, his faint freckles scrunching as his face smiled, same as her, as big as it had ever in his life. The desire to be close, closer, made her roll over onto him and tilt her head just right, her body to press against him just right, for something that needed to happen to happen.

First kisses were what dreams were made of, proven true then and there. In that moment, she thought she didn't care what her life was going to be as long as he had been there. _If only she knew._

She was bathed in moonlight in that twelve o'clock moment and he had been in her shadow.

Where his hands went next as she found herself, inadvertently, pinning his shoulders down and disheveling her dress down about tits high, had revealed they had loved other parts of each other as he went for the feel and she wanted nothing less.

Hops and Coda, his Jolteon, hadn't been too happy about how they rolled around on in the woods that night and why Danny couldn't return his tuxedo and there had been rips on McCain's, then Janie Thorpe, dress. _("How'd you know?" She asked, realizing that neither she nor Danny told their Pokémon about what they did on prom night. The answer Hops gave back was that some of his friends on Route 16 had watched. She slapped him for that answer._)

As she walked back to the helicopter, she thought of Danny, the sad realization that this had been the most she had thought of her husband for months.

She felt the pinch on her left arm. Hops wanted to talk.

"What?" He spoke in his tongue to her as she responded, his tone tired, a little disappointed. "I thought I-?"

Her jaw clenched whenever she was anxious, and most of the time she was anxious, a rarity for the headstrong woman, it had been because of the current state of her marriage. That's how Hops caught her distant in her eyes as they walked.

Hops hadn't liked the current status as much as anyone who knew. Asides from work, the two adults didn't have many friends. _Because of work._ Still he was biased. Biased, and he had many opinions that could said as such, he sided with McCain. He blamed Danny for not visiting more often. He was the one with the more civilian job after all. If also anything, he missed his "sister". Coda had been about three days older than him, hatched as an Eevee and spending most of the time in the Thorpe Diner with the Treeko that had been Hops.

Maybe the reason she and Danny never entertained kids was because they had two already in the form of a Grovyle and a Jolteon.

It definitely wasn't because of work.

"I'll- Yeah. I'll just tell him that I came here to surprise him." It was a weak excuse, and Hops talked down on her because of it. "We're both shitty at this long distance marriage thing, alright? Don't blame him more than me."

_Just like the marriage counselor said in their session (It was more a conference call)._

Hops growled, one eye squinted at her. "He doesn't call because he works overtime. Important stuff, alright? Just like the Master Ball."

She was only like this, guard down, obviously out of her element, with Hops. He knew her tics, her weaknesses, her failures. He owed it to her to call her out on it.

"Reminds me..." Her Ranger Styler was held in her hand like a walkie talkie as she drew it, the speed dial to her Operator pressed down. Even Rangers worked on Christmas, not just her. "Operator here. Go for ID."

"Ranger McCain, authenticate three-four foxtrot charlie."

"One moment… Authenticated. Patching you through to Mister Andrade. Merry Christmas!"

She was Jewish. Not practicing, but her family observed enough to not to account for Christmas. Nowadays she was too busy to celebrate Christmas, as much as she considered it.

She heard a grumble, the tale of a man who had been taking his sweet time as coffee on the other end was sipped at. McCain could only remember the time he had done that routine while she was being attacked by Hyper Beams and Hydro Pumps from irate Gyrados. In honesty she had like Andrade as her operator, but there was certain times his laid-back "I can't be a field Ranger anymore so I'm just an Operator now" schtick was a tad annoying for someone her age and speed.

"I was wondering where Lunick sent you last night, Janie." He teased in a way only a father could. He had two children, and he made it a habit whenever she stopped by HQ to talk to her about them and his family. She appreciated it, gave her perspective and thoughts that stewed in her own head sometimes.

"Merry Christmas, Andrade. Any updates for me?"

The shuffling of papers. "Your marriage counselor called. If you want to go past the first session, you're gonna have to pay up." Hops held in a laugh as she kicked dirt in his direction.

She had hoped he hadn't said that out loud or that the rest of HQ's operators had been at home, skipping work. It made her cringe, half because it was intensely private and the other half because she was in part ashamed.

When the love of her life was a region away, and she was a cop and he a top researcher for Silph, times to catch up were few and far between. They both had good jobs that turned into careers. Then again it had been only McCain's whose path that put her at risk of death or gross injury… that and she was the one that moved away in the first place.

She felt the pressure on her forearm again as Hops walked off a distance to probably take a leak. He knew she needed her privacy as she let out a groan she didn't know she was holding. He would give her more of a hard time later, hopefully with Danny in the room. "Anything else Chigurh?"

"Let's see… Uh, Solana left a message, invited you to take a few months off and spend it at the Ranger School. Apparently, they want to train more recruits on how to handle uh, deadly weapons."

Her influence followed her it seemed, and she damned not throwing away her gun in the same breath she threw away her badge. "Tell her I'll get back to her on that, but say it in a sorta mean, stand-offish way."

"Roger dodger. Any updates for me?"

Where could she start? "I'm working this Christmas, probably into New Years. I'm in Kanto, actually."

"Ooo. Look at you, moving up in the world. You get the writ of passage when I wasn't looking?"

She grit her teeth. "Uh, not exactly. I'm on a murder case. Jointly handled. Kanto PDs, Indigo League, and who else knows. I'm on op sec right now so I can't discuss, but I'll type up next time I'm on an encrypted line, that is if Lunick isn't already on top of the paper work."

"Murder? Christ. Man or Pokémon?"

There was no stalling. She had done this talk a handful of times before and it never got easier. "One of ours, Chigurh."

There was a pause, a coffee cup in the background was set down. "Fuck."

"Yeah. Is Gruber in?"

Realization. "Aw god dammit. Was it Parker? I told Gruber to call him every single day whenever he went off on these cases abroad but- _God dammit_."

"He have family?" Of course he did. McCain felt foolish asking. His family had been in six Pokémon that were both evidence and witnesses.

"I'll ask but- Jesus Christ McCain, you know what you're getting into out there?"

"I do." She pulled out her pistol again, taking count of her ammo as she depressed the magazine release and counted bullets. She had three mags on her. Two sat in her back-left jean pocket. 10 rounds per mag. She carried always. No reason not to, and the amount of times where she had to use it as a Ranger she could count on one hand. She kept up her practice, but she practiced more with her Styler now. No matter the case, this gun had drawn blood, taken lives before. It was ready. Was she though? She couldn't answer it to herself, but she answered her operator. "I can handle it, Andrade. Just put me on the clock. I've got leads and I'm following."

"Alright then, I'll play this right, by the book. Where you going Janie? For the record."

She heard the chopper powering up in the distance, the clouds forming up top spoke of snow that was just a little late for Christmas Eve's Day. There was a new nip in the air though, and it hadn't been of the cold. No colder had the air been on her flesh save for the warmth of the gold ring on her ring finger. It was encrusted, not with jewels, but with stone. It had been the coated with a Fire Stone. It was his idea, and she had loved it more than she had words to describe.

She loved him, and it hurt her with their situation.

"I'm going to see my husband."

* * *

**December 24th**

**2:16 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

A young man stands in the shadow of where his legacy began. Faintly, he heard Christmas music. Twenty years old and the way he stood was heavy, burdened with life by the slump of his shoulders and the scowl on his face.

Frosted windows panes, candles gleaming inside, painted candy canes on the tree. It was Christmas, and families, couples, walked about him as he stood in the shadow of a jewelry store right across from the Silph Co. Tower. He showed up early. About six hours early.

Bundled up in a heavy field jacket and a scarf, gifted to him by a girl he loved, _taught him how to love_, it was white with red stripes. Just like most of her clothing. Her favorite color combination and people had mistaken him for a candy cane. The fact he had blood red hair didn't help as frost chilled his breath.

He could take the cold though. He could take anything. What was going to happen meant everything to him. There was no other _way_.

The pain he felt now by standing in that cold was only a fraction of the pain he could imagine one of his closest, oldest friend had felt. For that, he would deal with anything, and do everything. For his sake.

He had overcome everything his life had given him, turned out a better man because of it, but in the end the old demons had to be confronted. The tower that shadowed over him, one hundred stories tall and the peak of that city's skyline, it hadn't been the place was business was conducted at the cutting edge of technology. At least, not to him: to him, this building was a monument to the failures of his father.

The reason why he was here, it had been complicated, but he couldn't help but feel compelled that, by taking it on now, he could forever overcome his past.

A vibration in his pocket. His burner phone rung. He answered.

"Go."

"The last of my men have regrouped. The operation is go. You better show up or we're coming for you next."

_Humph. _"I'm already there. You better come through."

"I wouldn't miss this for the world."


	2. 2:34 PM to 7:45 PM

**December 24th**

**2:34 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

* * *

In a roundabout way she was going to see her husband for Christmas. Just not upfront. She had a job to do, that's what she rationalized as she sat about a city away in a very, very familiar place. The smell of pastries and about an entire breakfast shift's worth of food had come up from the grill as she sat in the booth she had sat in for the first eighteen years of her life.

The Celadon City Diner (formerly the Thorpe Dining Hole), perhaps as a reflection of its simple name, had simple food; that is to say the best food that could come from a blue-collar establishment. It had been family owned for the last eighty years, and the first break in that generational inheritance had been in the form of the young woman who sat with an entire booth to herself.

The owners didn't mind though.

Not when they had been Janie McCain's parents. Her brother thought might've had a few more choice words as he poured her apple juice again for the fourth time that day.

"You 'gon give me a tip, right Jain?"

"Fuck off John." Had been McCain's aggravated, if not tired and muted voice. There had been a plate of half eaten waffles and fried chicken to the side of the four-man booth, otherwise left for later as the case notes, hand written, all piled up as the laptop before her had been sending messages back and forth with Ranger HQ back in Fiore.

"Who's that?" A blue haired ace Ranger, her commanding officer no less, had asked in the video chat off her laptop.

John rolled his eyes as he put back on a presentable, amiable face to go attend to another pair of guests. Even if he was home, he wasn't happy working on Christmas Eve.

"Just my dead-beat brother." McCain had said that as lovingly as she could, seeing her mother poke her head out of the window between restaurant and kitchen. She flashed a shrug at McCain, and she could only send a thumbs up back. She asked if her food was any good with the gesture. Of course it was. She was home and having the food of her youth in her stomach had been a blessing. A Christmas gift unto itself. One she couldn't appreciate fully given what she was doing now.

Lunick Stallone had been one of the best damn Rangers to have come around in the years since the Rangers started actively recruiting. Rumor had it he had been a failed professional trainer, raring to go at something else to hit it big. He wouldn't confirm or deny, but he had the certain _touch_ that ace trainers seemed to have. It was almost as if he had been a character of a larger story, and he played his part well. Played it well enough to have gotten the station of Fall City beneath his command.

A feat, no doubt, especially since McCain and him had been the same age and she had been doing law enforcement longer than anyone in the Ranger Union coming into it. She didn't dwell on it, for her own sanity.

Still he was a good CO, and she had no complaints with him as, a few timezones away, he was as groggy as anyone related to the Cerulean-Parker Case, as it was coming to be known on all those who had been on the email or message chains.

"You know Parker's case files would've immediately gone to me." He spoke with a hint of skepticism. "Most international rangers from Fiore designate a backup in case of… tragedies like this. But of course, this is special."

"Yeah…" McCain had been coming through freshly printed scans and notes taken from Parker's Styler. His body had been out of the cave for the last hour and Cerulean PD had sent over the content of the Styler to the Ranger Union. Subsequently it had been sent back to Kanto to McCain's own connection to HQ and either transferred to her Styler or printed. "This wasn't even the only case he was on, coming out here."

Lunick nodded behind the screen, running a finger through his blue hair as he picked up his tablet on the other end. "I'll take the rest of 'em, McCain, but you keep the Silph files. Those seem like the ones that got him killed. If anything, you'll shoot back."

Gallows humor didn't exactly seem appropriate when Lunick wasn't on the gallows, but she couldn't blame him. He hadn't dealt with homicide cases as a Ranger. This was an uneasy event and when the rest of Fiore woke up, the Ranger Union would be in mourning. How he dealt with it she could only imagine how any golden boy would've. "Glad you want me out of the picture so quickly Lunick."

His eyes rolled behind the screen. "Nonsense, who else can strong arm the Fall City Port Authority like you?"

That was her usual assignment: doing inspections on any cargo ships flagged that came into Fall City. It kept her close to the station, but it hadn't been the most fulfilling job. Instead of smuggled Pokémon it had usually been smuggled contraband, and at that point she'd hand it over to Port Authority. Usually rough and tumble sailors had been more willing to throw down with a Ranger, and thus, the only Ranger that had been licensed to have a gun had been on station. Lunick's fears were not unfounded though as she had to put her gun to work at times. The threat of it being drawn was often enough to diffuse any situations. That was on a good day.

"So have the calls cleared? Am I good to work in Kanto-Johto?"

He shrugged. "Eh, most of the preliminary stuff is fine. Your papers for that region are still in circulation from your time in Celadon PD and your name throws around weight. If that Gym Leader, uh, what was her name?"

"Misty."

"Yeah, Misty. If she vouches for you you're cleared for work and all the resources of the local PDs."

The Chingling rang on the counter as it saw another family walk into the café. The local Chingling trainers made quite a buck renting out their Pokémon to businesses who would enjoy them and their noise that time of year. Her family had always been one of them. Thorpe Diner had one giant counter that spanned almost the entire restaurant in a U shape, only splaying out toward the back for kitchen access, booths otherwise lining the walls like the one she was in. Still the long grill was out and centered, two sided, letting people smell the simpler meals they came in here to celebrate. Only now did the smell of pine mix with bacon, and it hadn't been too comforting after the first hour.

Local boys ran the cooking stuff, while her family and extended family waited and managed. That might've been her life too, but no such luck. She was too ambitious for such a homely life.

McCain came unannounced, just before the lunch rush, dropped off and the Celadon PD building and promptly ducking out of sight without anyone noticing. When she came back the lunch rush became hell. The prodigal child returned: the most successful child of the beloved Thorpe family, come back from saving the world with her lofty title of Pokémon Ranger.

She did visit as often as she could, often when she came to Celadon to visit her husband, so she hadn't been sorely missed. What personal days she did take she often spent coming home to them and him. He lived in Celadon while working in Saffron, the metro train over not more than ten minutes, so it was a matter of convenience. Her parents hadn't enjoyed the thought of her moving to Fiore any more than her husband, but they enjoyed she was in a fundamentally less violent trade now.

It why they hadn't been showering her with hugs and kisses as she was on the comm on her Styler, respecting the fact she was technically on the job. She could see them out of the corner of her eye, as always, peeking out the kitchen/diner window as they checked up on their little girl. They had her young, so they were still on the grind of restaurant owning.

He shuffled in his office back in Fiore, leaning into the camera of his computer to make certainly clear what he was saying was brought across.

"McCain you know as well as anyone what this case is gonna look like, so I'm gonna transfer your other current files over to the rest of Fall City's Ranger complement. Hell, I'll take a few. I need you on this 100%."

100% was what Parker deserved, no doubt, and she wasn't blind to what was owed a dead man. She knew what it was like to have emotional debt, and to pay it off was always something she tried to do.

"You'll have nothing less, sir."

"I trust ya. Stallone out."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure tilt their head at her, non-verbally asking if she was open to a talk. She shook her head though, thumbing the contacts on her Styler before anyone interrupted her. To appear busy was a great way to be left alone at the office and she had done office politics for the last few years. She didn't even say hi when the contact was called.

"Anything new on the Pokéballs?" She heard her Operator chuckle at her punctuality. Andrade was a good man, and she had always wondered why she had been paired with him, but, as far as she knew, he had done her well. She had been on call with him before Lunick had interrupted.

"Master Balls you mean? Yeah." More papers shuffling. "They're definitely machined from a recent run, cross comparison with Pokeballs sold in the last calendar year show the same machine markings. Celadon PD ran forensics. No fingerprints though."

Easy enough of a break. Shame on no fingerprints or DNA, but gloves were basic thug 101. "That gives us precedent for a task force to go out to Sevii and start pressing the managers… thought the Master Ball development tools were scrapped anyway after the law was passed."

"Key word was disassembled Jain."

Take a nut from the joint, break it in two, and that was enough for the Indigo League to okay Silph Co from avoiding sanctions. When Master Balls were subject to public safety legislation, the items themselves weren't banned. Enough had been distributed to the various Leagues and privileged few for that to be an interesting affair. Rather, the production of them had been outlawed instead, and, to the average consumer with high dreams of catching anything they wanted, that was enough.

To someone who would go as so far as shoot a law enforcement official, apparently not.

"What does your husband do at Silph anyway? We going to have to book him?"

Andrade was in jest but Lunick would've probably already been looking into it. Anyone who knew that Danny had been doing work with Silph was probably looking into him. Unfair, surely, guilty by association, but McCain still had to answer the question. "He's in field R&D, the Pokéball division is separate."

"So like, what, those running shoes that spit air my kids are always asking about?"

Like those running shoes McCain had been wearing now. When perps ran she usually caught them. They had been a gift from Danny, years ago when she first became a beat cop, exactly for such reasons. Whenever she did visit their house in Celadon he would always have some prototype or another that he "borrowed" from the division. Some had been useful, some not. She appreciated them all, naturally, but the running shoes had been the most useful.

"Something like that…" McCain had put down the Silph folder, palming her eyes in her hands, sick of black text on white paper. "Okay, I'm going to send you off for a bit Andrade, ring me back if you hear anything new."

"Stay safe McCain. You're my favorite Ranger."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You make office gossip so much better. Merry Christmas, and say hi to Danny for me."

The moment her line was dropped someone had slid back into the seat across from her, Hops on her lap. It was Mom. In her older years she hadn't lost the energy, but she had been losing the sight. As was why a new pair of rather thick, large glasses had been on the crook of her nose. The same nose that McCain had, gifted to her by her mother. Her hair was in a neat pony tail, greyed, but not gone, her skin perpetually having some sort of mist of kitchen oil on it given the type of food they made here.

"So is this what you look like when you're working sweetie?" Mrs. Thorpe had teased her daughter. She never brought work home with her, at least, not physically. The desk at the Celadon PD was there for a reason, and unlike some officers she kept a private life private. She used to be uptight, professional to a T. Life had broken her down, eased her off. Her grit had been replaced by a certain tiredness.

McCain could only chortle, rubbing tired eyes. Half the table had been Parker's notes, the other half had been her own: the main divider being a laptop and her Styler. Her messy handwriting made itself known on a notepad too small to fully contain her thoughts.

"What's this all for?"

McCain put on a smile for her dear mother. "You know I can't tell ya Mom."

She reached across the table and ruffled her hair, Hops taking the opportunity to dismount her and return to McCain's side. He always enjoyed cleaning up McCain's leftovers, especially in the restaurant.

"Could've at least given me us a heads up you were coming back. Me and your father would've made room for you at the Christmas table tonight."

"Nah, no need, Mom. I'm going to be working at a hotel, probably."

A toothpick had come out of Mrs. Thrope's breast pocket, and McCain had remembered where Hops had picked up his habit, the Grovyle settling for a leaf of mint at the moment. Thumbing the thin stick between her teeth she chided her daughter. "Nonsense. Save some of that money, right after this shift I'll send John up and clear out your room, at least you can work there so when you go see Danny you can do good on last year's New Year Resolution."

That last resolution had gone unfulfilled, that being that balance between home and work life kept. Here she was in the middle of her childhood home (their apartment upstairs) and she had been working a murder case of all things.

She was a week early to Kanto, all things given.

They had a home here. An honest home in Celadon, with a modest lawn jutting out to the busy street half way between the urbanity and suburbanity of Kanto. It was empty, of both the woman of the house and of an actual family living there, but Danny McCain had maintained the homefront while his wife was away in Fiore, sleeping in nature or in the bunks of her Ranger station. It'd been a long time since she had been truly home. Every other time had just been a visitation, a teaser for some unknown when she could return home.

A cold breath came out of her mouth. "I know I ain't been the best daughter, nor the best wife, Mom, but… I don't know. I can't just meet Danny like this, on the job. It ain't right."

A larger man had been over her shoulder. Mr. Thorpe had gotten rather portly after their last child had been born, but he wore it with pride in the kitchen. "Hey there, punk."

McCain smiled up at her father. "Hi Dad."

Punk had been her pet name as a child, for she had been one. The elder McCain had looked to his wife and seen the worry in her face for their daughter. "Danny stopped by for dinner last night. You seen him yet?" McCain shook her head. "Know where he at today then?" Again, she shook her head.

She hadn't called her husband in days on account of a fight over telephone after their last counseling session. It had been a waste of money, he said, they knew their problems. She had been liable to agree but it hadn't been cause to cuss the counselor out over the phone. "'Fraid not Dad."

He nodded thoughtfully, sliding over some coffee to his wife in a teacup. With a tip of his head he coaxed Mrs. Thorpe the thought they were sharing. "Well, he said that Mr. Silph was throwing a Christmas Party tonight for the company. He didn't have a date, so, well, I reckon he'd be happy to see ya. Even if it is on business. Hell, I'm with your mother all the time at work."

Father Thrope had sweetly pressed his face into the top of his wife's head, and she had enjoyed the affection as, for a moment, McCain had been transformed back into a kid and resented her parents public affection.

"If you haven't noticed I don't exactly work a domestic job." It was a fact they two were painful aware of, ever since she had joined the force. "In fact no one's really happy to see me showing up when I'm on the job."

"Yeah, but you're not arresting Danny." Father Thorpe had been less right than he thought as McCain held her tongue.

There was no way Danny had any part of this wrong doing. He had been too nice growing up, too straight and raised right. He was, and she didn't admit this unless in tender moments with him, good enough for the both of them. And she didn't lie: his division in Silph wasn't related to the Pokeballs.

"The principle-"

"Damn the principle of it, Jainie." Mrs. Thorpe had almost slammed the table, sterning her daughter and dishevling already chaoticly organized notes. McCain held her tongue and clenched her jaw as she remembered that, once, long ago, she was her parents' little punk. "Danny misses his wife, and last I checked, you still are his."

If their current state of affairs kept on going, maybe, maybe not. Hops had cringed for her as she averted her eyes from her father.

She very much wanted to be his wife, as much as he wanted to be her husband, but the problems of a professional life interfered. It didn't help that Danny never particularly agreed to her position with the Rangers.

There was pain in her eyes, and her parents, more than anyone else in that world, knew it. Their gazes softened, and Mrs. Thorpe had reached out and put a brown strand of hair in front of McCain's face behind her ear before cupping her cheek. "Just call if you need anything, Jainie. We love you."

Father Thorpe nodded gruffly, agreeing.

With a slight sniffle, McCain had put that subject behind her. She was still on the job.

"I know Ma'. I know..."

Left alone now, it was just her and Hops. He gave her that knowing look, the one he gave her when he knew that she was overworking for the sake of overworking. She slept better on the nights she did, but it wasn't healthy. Gray strands of hair had sprout up, from time to time, at far too often a frequency.

"Look," She thumbed some of Parker's notes. "If I work myself to death, this is the case to do it on."

Hops was very much like her mother, mirroring the hand that reached across the table and grabbed her forearm, over the tan mark that her styler had made.

His conversational speech was very rare to hear. He spoke more in hands and face gestures, in chirps and growls. He had a language understood by all Pokémon, but the speak he used with McCain, one on one, where context could not be bridge enough, was a sign of a bond that did clue many that perhaps McCain could've been a great trainer.

He spoke elongated growls, his throat used fully as if mimicking a canine Pokemon. One might be liable to mistake it as that, but no, this was a conversation.

'_I'm your partner, Jain. I'm supposed to take care of you.'_

That's what he said, starting harsh, but ending soft.

"I know, Hops. I know." She bit again into a waffle, tired. It'd been a long day and she had just finished lunch.

Hops chirped again. "Drink some coffee."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Never."

The Grovyle had rolled his eyes, taking his own mug and sipping. More for him, he supposed. "There is a party, you know. An actual Christmas Party at Silph. I suggest going. Been a while since we've been to one."

He was right. He always was. Grumbling she had offered her unused cup of joe over to his side of the table. "We'll go around six. I still got work to do."

* * *

**4:00 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

Daniel McCain worked very hard for his life, and for his wife that matter. He had once been a trainer on the Indigo League circuit, duking it out on the lesser tournaments for cash as opposed to badges or renown. His family was well off, enough to have sent him to a private school. Instead of going into an actual, straight edge career, as soon as he was able he had set off traveling Kanto and Johto.

"Lightning McCain!" They had called him. Every trainer who had become a regular on the battling circuit had some sort of nickname as if it had been a wrestling match between trainer and not their Pokémon.

He left that life behind, around the time he got married, but with the money he had already built up he had bought a house in the new projects of Celadon, meant for young professionals like himself and his wife.

He looked at it during his usual 4 o'clock break. If this was a regular work day he'd only have an hour left before he packed up and went home. Today was Christmas however.

Holding the picture fondly, as he had every day, he remembered why he was in an office job now and not appeasing some youthful instinct in him to roam. The very least he could've done was actually go out into the field as a trainer in Silph's Field Division, but no, this paid more.

They were 22 when they bought the house, a two-story, white affair straddling the old and new parts of Celadon. Enough lawn for a tree, and enough backyard to worry about cutting it, albeit being boxed in by other model houses in three directions. They still lived in the city, but at least for a moment they could believe they made it to suburbia.

The picture had shown a younger him, fresh shaven and less bulk then he had now. He was still a kid in the photo, taken the day they bought the house from the realtor, and they posed very much like a family.

Janie had been in his arms as if again a bride, and their two "kids" had been Hops and Coda, standing by their legs giving thumbs up and smiles.

Better times, perhaps. Before Janie had become swept up in a police revolution that chased her to the far corner of the world, away from him.

He got his olive skin from his parents, having emigrated from Hoenn, the thick bushy beard he kept trimmed only matching the fluffy top that developed upwards. He looked distinctly like some 90s stock jockey from Nimbasa, but he had made it far enough up in Silph for no one to call him out on it.

Standing up, stretching his for, the white he wore today with jeans had been a casual affair.

As the door to his office on the 83rd floor opened, he was reminded that in about an hour it was to be the start of the Christmas Party, sound being let in. As for who let themselves in-

"Mr. Silph!" Danny had stopped stretching and approached his boss in his new office, folding that picture frame down from its window shelf. Just recently promoted to Head of Field Division, Internal Offices. Rug, bookcases with literature he hadn't been sure how they got there, two couches and a table between them for meetings with his subordinates. The entire office was a mahogany and jade affair; he even got his own bathroom.

"Oh Daniel," The older man had taken off his top hat as he approached Danny. "I thought I told you to call me by my first name."

He had survived a long life and came out on the top of the world because of it, so much so that as a billionaire he made himself look like a homely man, his long white beard and moustache almost going to his chest like the old Kung-Fu masters. His eyes had Murkow's Feet, but they only served to focus his gaze at his age, cast upon Danny.

"Force of habit, Joe." Danny placated, sitting on his desk as Mr. Silph made himself comfortable on the couch facing him. Danny had closed the folder he was working through: proposals for more universal first aid kits, sprouting off of Potion development. Biofoam and medigel being able to cover and stabilize all but the most internal of injuries. In the last year he had become quite learned in first aid and the medical pursuits of the roaming trainer he had once been. "What can I do you for?"

"Oh nothing," Mr. Silph had waved his hand, "just wanted to chat. Is all."

Danny had pursed his lips, "Alright, shoot."

It turns out chatting had been about as heavy as being hit by a Machamp's punch. "I couldn't but hear, passing by your office the other day… Were you using company time to attend a conference call with a marriage therapist and your wife?"

Caught red handed and Danny thought he was going to lose the office he just got.

"Oh!" Danny had raised his arms caught before lowering them, a Deerling caught in the headlights. "Uh, sorry sir, it was just, urgent and, well, my work was mostly predisposed for the day and I had time before the usual Department Head meetings that-"

Mr. Silph had raised his hands at Danny to tell him to settle down. "Oh it's alright boy. I understand up here in the offices can be, well, a tad more unoccupying than being down there with the cubicles and field researchers."

Danny had wanted to speak out more, to excuse himself for letting his marriage interfere with his work, though he could say nothing as Mr. Silph apparently saw no harm in it, straightening his lips.

"I'm sorry, Joe."

Again Mr. Silph had made a gesture, saying no big deal. "I just didn't want you to preoccupied while we throw this party. Such a heavy topic would surely weigh you down."

"We're okay. I'm okay." He wasn't quite sure he believed himself, but Mr. Silph shook his head.

"I haven't lived this long, Daniel, without knowing where you've been. At least you are reaching out to a professional for help, and that must count for something."

His entire life had been more or less planned for him. Either by his parents, or by himself when he had the ability. Maybe the plans weren't the best, nor the most sound or logical, but they all were felt right to him. They all kept his heart at ease and at peace. The only person to come storming into his life had been the woman he married, and for as much sense it didn't make for him to marry someone with a criminal record (Albeit reformed), that had settled his heart the most.

"Just didn't think my life was gonna turn out like this." Mr. Silph could only smile at him as Danny realized what it could be interpreted as. "I mean- I am very thankful for this position, Mr. Silph-"

"Joe."

"Joe! But uh, ah- It's just."

"Oh settle down there Danny."

He did, looking out the windows to a fiery sunset. It looked hot but he knew sure as hell it was cold out. "I just miss my wife, sir, is all."

Mr. Silph nodded up and down several times. "I see. Well," standing up, offering his hand to his newest executive, there was a Christmas party to attend to. "Help us out set up for the party, getting your mind off this should do you some good."

* * *

**6:32 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

The metro tram over had been speedy enough. It was the same line that connected Saffron and Goldenrod, extended out to Celadon now. Kanto and Johto had been changing, she knew. In the time that she had left the regions had gone through an economic boom matched only by Unova at the end of the last century. The olden regions had become new again and its ports and cities built up and up. The urban population exploded as even poor old Pallet Town dealt with such topics as gentrification. Along the advertisements put up in the tram had been one of Professor Oak's petitions to keep South-East Kanto free of urban build up.

Times had changed. Globalism that had once nearly two decades ago made Hops as a Treeko a star in public due to his rarity in the region, had no one looking at him now in the train. Among other Pokémon out had been Rockruff from Alola on its trainer's shoulders, a few Pokémon she couldn't identify from Sinnoh and Unova. There was even just a Gallade riding the tram alone.

Still, it was perhaps better that way, gotten off without issue to a city that was, both metaphorically and literally, at the heart of Kanto's boom.

Saffron City.

Her leather jacket had been enough to keep the wind chill from affecting her as Hops held onto her back, stepping out of the station. The smell of urbanity with its foul and yet electrifying scent pervaded. Fall City had paled in comparison, and the city was growing every day, the sound of construction in the distance unkind to her.

She spent the last half-decade in nature, out in the frontiers of the world. To come back it felt harmful to her.

People pushed past her, obviously busier than her as she stepped asides from the leaving crowd, taking in the city.

Maybe N was right, she recounted Team Plasma in Unova. Perhaps a world without Pokémon would've been better, based on how few she saw that hadn't been owned. A Raticate had picked at a trash can as she saw eyes peer from tops and corners of buildings, out of sight and mind as cars and crowds filled the street. These people were going home for the day as the sky ran a dark red on Christmas Eve.

A Delibird and a man dressed as Santa across the way echoed. "Alms for the less fortunate this Christmas! Please! Help those who would be alone tonight!"

She dug the change from the ticket over to Saffron from her pocket, crossing the street as she made eye contact with the charity worker, placing the coins into his collection bin.

Again and again she had to remember it was Christmas, and her mood did not account for it. "Thank you, kind ma'am." Santa had spoke to her, as did the Delibird. Hops chewed on another thing of wheat as the Delibird reached into its burlap sack, offering out a scratch ticket. "As a token of our appreciation, the Kanto Charity Group would like to offer you the chance to win a ticket to one of the Waterflower's shows in Cerulean."

McCain waved the Delibird down. "Oh, don't worry, keep it." She put on a smile as she trod away down those streets, beginning, sub-consciously, to trace her old beat as a cop. Saffron, nearly a decade ago, had always outsized Celadon, so at times during peak periods she was sent to Saffron on loan.

And again, even back in those days, the star of the town had been the Silph Co. Tower. An easy land mark for anyone to find. It had grown about a third more, last she'd been in Saffron, construction evident toward the top. Whatever happened in that town seemed to happen because of Silph. Either because what it was doing or what had been done to it. The amount of technological snowballing that happened because of its R&D had trickled down into the city, the once homely brick and mortar buildings being replaced by steel and glass. Money meant modernity and it spread from the center.

To McCain, all it meant that people were more likely to take up crime in places where money had piled up. The tallest castle of it she approached after half an hour of walking through those changing streets. The decorations of the holiday thrown onto the town in substitute for lack of snow. Strangely less and less people had been toward the center of town, leaving her alone as she stood before her goal that day.

Too much glass for her taste, the walls were windows and thus all of Silph were lain bare to any flying Pokémon that flew up there. She enjoyed privacy, but then again, she hadn't been an architect. The building hadn't even been done anyway, the last dozen floors or so up there being attended to by an idle crane that reached all the way down from the ground. Ever since Rocket had barged in, there was a new call for renovations and security, and, quite frankly, seemed to McCain a bit much.

The building was surrounded on all sides by a rather nice plot of city ground, a plaza almost, if there had been anything but the paved ground level, the occasional trash can or light post marking the flat affair which extended out as far as a block. Silph had the money for the permits and land, surely, but it was a hell of a walk that, if it was done for security purposes, made sense. No cover, and all the cameras from the building on those that approached: like her.

She felt vulnerable on the walk up, the shadow of the building cast on her as it seemed Saffron receded behind her. Moreso Hops had felt out of his element. There had been no nature around and nothing to jump to but McCain's back, which he did, she taking the weight naturally as the glass doors to the lobby were approached in the dying light of Christmas Eve.

There was a doorman in that white lobby behind a U-shaped desk at the back, its brightness beaming out as if the future itself. An initial tug resulted in nothing but wasted strength, the doorman noticing only after the fact, a buzz letting loose the magnetic lock and letting McCain in.

First impressions hadn't meant much when she had seen the décor before: in Castelia City's office towers. The designer of the renovations probably had been Unovan.

The lobby had been nice and professional, chairs too low and too square for her tastes surrounding coffee tables with magazines toting Silph's advancements in the world. Glass cabinets decorated the side, boasting of magazine or newspaper clippings that chronicled achievements and milestones while Pokémon benefitting from their work were in artsy photographs on the wall. The sheen of the walls themselves seemed perfected as they vaguely reflected her as she walked in. A giant metal Christmas tree had been in the corner, not at all warm to her.

This was only a lobby: the elevators to the rest of the building behind the metal detectors adjacent the front desk.

The front man: an older man, on his police pension probably, McCain figured, sat at the desk after ringing her in from his station, the echoes of a Pokémon battle on a hidden screen on his desk playing.

Approaching him, Hops had gone down, a screen on the visitor side of the desk awaiting input. "I'm here to see my husband."

The older man looked up at McCain, eyebrow raised. "Huh. Wasn't alerted… then again who would, the entire damn office upstairs is throwing their Christmas party." He grumbled, only barely looking at McCain as the Pokémon Battle he had been looking at was more captivating. His finger pointed over the desk in the general area of the screen. "Punch in his name and just follow the directions."

M-C-C-A-I-N.

Daniel McCain, Field Division Executive. Floor 83. Room 105.

A directory had popped up with a set of directions to his office. It dawned on McCain that she had never visited her husband at work, but then again, they'd both be doing the same tonight, for the first time.

Upon hearing the confirmation ring the doorman had nodded. "ID please?"

Both of them, then. "I might need help getting through the detectors."

Her wallet was flipped out and the doorman finally paid attention. Most law enforcement, new and old, in Kanto and Johto knew who she was. "You're the one who put me out of a job."

There was sourness in his voice and McCain could only cringe, pocketing her identification as she opened her jacket, showing off her pieces. "Wasn't my intention… Where were you?"

"Saffron PD. 3rd Precinct." He wasn't fat or old like most retired cops, but he had less hair and a scowl because of it. "Youngster like you changed the game. Made kicking in doors fashionable."

Her boots had changed through the years, from issued, to tactical, to hiking, but she still felt the phantom marks on the rubber soles from boots past where she had splinters and debris lodged in them. Her right leg became very familiar with the way a door and a lock buckles beneath a kick.

"Rocket changed the game. Not me." The doorman typed into his keyboard, the metal detectors shutting off as he waved McCain through. She caught him, and he knew that was the truth, still, he didn't like thinking about it.

His nose crinkled. "This whole damn world is moving on too fast. In the old days when a gang of ruffians got caught, they stopped their shtick. Ain't none of this Rainbow Rocket, Neo-Rocket or whatever. One and done. Now they just use it as work experience… I couldn't keep up."

McCain had wanted to say the police forces of the world had gotten soft. That their laxing of the rule book had caused a rise in the type of behaviors that led to Magma, and Aqua, Plasma and Cipher. She was the only option they had when it came to laying down the law, and reminding people that there had been people with the mandate of society to keep it safe. She wanted to say things could've been different.

But they hadn't.

"Was around this time, my last year on the force, that I had to deal with my first murder, you know that McCain?" To hear a total stranger say her name, it hadn't gotten any easier, especially when it was used in scorn. "He didn't run, he didn't hide, he was just there in his apartment when we came in: knife in hand, blood on blade, her body not even cold. He cried and he confessed to me the second I came in. _She didn't understand, she didn't understand, _he told me."

"Got a point here?"

"Violence begets violence." His tongue held on that word: violence, unkind to those hearing it.

On his television screen an Empoleon had just swiped at a Monferno, the impact felt even through the sound and the thrill of the crowd, filling in the silence between two former cops.

She breathed out coldly. She had heard this all the time, ever since she had led the very idea of a SWAT unit into the mainstream police force. "Nothing lasts forever. Times will change." That's what everyone had to hope for after all. That extremist idiots wouldn't try to hold Elite Four as hostages or trying to flood the world with artifacts far beyond their understanding. There was only so many things a gun could solve compared to the power of love or, at the very least, as history seemed to tell, a gifted Pokémon Trainer to throw themselves into the thick of it and save them all.

"Long as I collect my pension, I'm fine!" He laughed, over it. If McCain had her opportunity to bellyache to the reason why she thought the world had been head over heels, going south, she would've done it.

"You seem to be in a Christmas mood." Opening her jacket to let the man look inside again, he had raised his eyebrow. "Just to let you know."

He saw the gun, only to shake his head, done with it. "Just don't drink." He opened his own jacket and showed his metal flask. "And if you start shooting people, come down and shoot me! I sure as shit don't want to deal with the paperwork."

McCain could only give him an apathetic face, shrugging, walking through to the elevator area.

Hops had followed, not even looking at the man.

It was warm enough inside, the sound of her worn shoes clacking against tile floor, finding the elevator bays. Four in total, four on each side in the inlet from the lobby. She took off her leather jacket, her green and grey flannel left on but unbuttoned as she transitioned the holster beneath that layer. Anyone who took a good look at her would've figured her for carrying, but at a glance she was fine.

Passing into the inlet she glanced up, a rather wide protrusion for a gate to come down from the ceiling, sealing off the elevators.

The report she wrote following the first Team Rocket raid had affected Mr. Silph in spades perhaps, the free usage of the elevators allowing Team Rocket to spread out throughout the building fast.

She punched the button of one of the elevators up, pocketing her hands, whistling a Christmas tune on her lips. She wasn't a singer but she had to have become good at some things during lonely nights out in the Fiore wilderness.

The elevator made it down and she had made her way in, the one hundred or so buttons that would've otherwise been there on older elevators for a building that tall replaced by nothing more than a keypad: 83, she punched in, the holiday elevator music kicking in.

Hops had a curl in his stomach the second the elevator started to ascend.

McCain chuckled as any mother would to her uneasy child. "Buckle-up, sweetheart."

Hops growled at her as he did settle, the floors going by rather fast as he, in a bark, told her to buckle up. She was seeing her husband again tonight.

When the floor hit 83 the elevator smoothly stopped, the sound of a party underway coming through. In Fiore, the Rangers knew how to throw a block party in the name of Christmas, so she was interested to see what the business elite could as she poked her head out.

Floors 80-83 had been the office suites for the department heads and the lower managers, 83 being where no less than where Danny ended up as head of Field Division. He had sent pictures of his office and the floor, but seeing it was believing: walking right out of the elevator inlet and being met with red velvet carpet that only led to a floor plan of offices on two levels, all surrounding a natural pond and rock display which people had been free to walk through as if a park. A waterfall which routed through the higher rock formations had fallen back into the pond, offering a serene ambiance as a string bang played highbrow music. Even the Pokémon present had seemed to match the atmosphere.

Hops had done a double take between McCain, himself, and then another woman with her Combusken, sitting on the edge of the rock pond. The Combusken's fur seemed so finely sheened and groomed that only then did he realize that both he and his Ranger looked like country yokels.

Suits, button downs, dresses and jewelry. The hallmark signs of executives patting themselves on the back. The party was mostly concentrated in the natural display, on the outside of the depression before the rock and pond garden had been refreshments, black suited butlers and psychic Pokémon roaming around tending to the needs of the guests.

Before anyone could notice McCain, a butler had done so, a plate of champagne flutes before her face as she blinked several times, confused.

"May we offer you something, ma'am?" The butler asked. McCain had her leather jacket around her left arm, her right arm slowly coming up and grabbing a drink.

"This should be enough, thank you." Maybe it was the fact that it seemed rude to not, but as the butler smiled at her and turned away she had downed it, the bubbly taste here and gone as she realized that these champagne flutes were more for holding than drinking: They were watered down.

A cute Abra had appeared at their feet, the empty flute gingerly taken from her hands as she was finished.

Hops had thanked the Abra for her as it silently blinked away in a teleport.

It was a crowd of maybe forty people, more men than women, but what else was new this high up the food chain?

"Merry Christmas!" A man had come up from the stairs and seized her by her sides. On his breath had been a little more scotch than champagne, his face a little too close to her own as her right arm braced across herself and elbow jabbed, as politely as she could, into his own chest and pushing him off.

"Not available, bud."

The man hadn't known what had been done to him as he stumbled a step or two back silently, just shrugging as he cried the joys of Christmas somewhere else with someone else. It was her intention to find someone else too as she stepped into the depression of the garden, a weird dissonance between the tile paths and the nature that surrounded it.

"Excuse me," a group of women had been chatting amongst themselves on the edge of one pond, the same group with a Combusken. They'd been smoking in doors but no one seemed to mind exactly, especially not McCain as she approached them. "I'm looking for a Daniel McCain. He 'round?"

"Hi! Merry Christmas," the lead of the group, younger than McCain and with a cigarette between her fingers, offering. It was then that McCain realized that the cigarette hadn't been tobacco and remembered why she hadn't been a drug officer. "Would you like some? It's straight out of Floaroma Town."

McCain didn't quite care but Hops went for it, only for her to, as subtly as she could, step on his tail not to. "I'm good, thanks. Again, I'm looking for a Mr. McCain, is he here today?"

She hoped that he hadn't taken off early at least.

The girls all spoke to each other, they didn't recognize the name. "Do you know what he looks like?"

McCain nodded. "Always have, he's my husband."

A round of Ooo's had come about the group of girls, the Combusken seeming annoyed with them all and their trainer. Hops rose an eyebrow at the Pokémon, and they had only shrugged.

"Do you know what he does here?" One of them had asked.

She could've answered both ways. "He got promoted recently, Field Division-"

The woman had stopped mid-sentence it seemed, and it was look McCain knew very well. She wasn't always like this: Gritty and annoyed at life. She used to be a hardass. She was a Captain of a division which had the responsibility of shooting people who threatened the public safety and with that came a certain weight that put her in a certain mindset. When she approached certain rooks on the team, they had that captured look in their eye that spoke of fear and respect.

"A recent promotion to field division? I believe that I would know Daniel McCain." When McCain turned over, she was face to face with a man who had made more than she would make in a thousand lifetimes and had already lived out one. He was a thin man, in a good, nice suit, a smile on his face that reminded her of her late grandfather's. That warm and kind look went away as he puckered his lips in confusion at McCain. "You- you seem familiar?"

She offered her hand, dreading what was to come. He shook it gently while still staring deep into her. "I'm Daniel McCain's wife, sir."

Silph had narrowed his eyes at her more. "No, no, I do know that, it's just…" Realization hit him as if he had been shot. "Oh my. I didn't know you were _that _McCain."

He recognized her. Of course, he would've, they'd met before, a long time ago in passing. When the Silph building was cordoned off for a police investigation she was one of the officers on call. They shook hands, nothing less. Back then she grew her hair out more.

She smiled through the awkwardness of being made by none other than the owner of one of the world's biggest companies. "Don't worry, I'm not in that job anymore." she said as the gun against her said suddenly felt three times as heavy.

Silph seemed relieved, but it was in jest. "Come come," he ankled her out of the group of women. "I'll take you to his office, I just told him to go settle some affairs in his division downstairs before he comes joins us."

"Oh- my. Thanks you." Being led by Mr. Silph himself was an experience to beheld. "Hey, Hops, go troll around, would ya?"

Hops nodded, he didn't want to be around for this, and secretly neither did Janie.

"Oh your Daniel has certainly been an asset for Silph in the last decade," Mr. Silph praised her husband, and in some small part she had joy in it. Passing by a bust of some Pokémon into a hallway away from the party affair, names of people on frosted windows mounted on doors passed by them as they walked. At the very end of the hall they found his: DANIEL J. MCCAIN. The J was for Jackson. "I remember when he was just a young circuit trainer, but even then he wanted to extend his help to us as best he could!"

Danny wanted a career. He took his shot and made it.

Mr. Silph saw the same amazement of how cushiony this office was on her face as Daniel had when he first saw it. Perhaps this was the first time that she had fully recognized where her husband had ended up. "Woah."

Mr. Silph bellowed a proud laugh as he let her pass into his office first. It smelt like business. "Did I tell you that Daniel was one of the first to prototype those very shoes you're wearing?" Mr. Silph pointed out the Running Shoes on her, not noticing they were in fact an employee pair and not bought. "He was, and still is, at the forefront of Silph Co.'s products and research that the average everyman has access too."

She didn't know what to say as he approached his large bureau and saw his scraggly handwriting on notes and documents. She didn't know what to say when he saw that same picture of them she had in her wallet, larger, and in frame on the cabinets that lined the windows, looking out to Saffron City.

"What a view."

Mr. Silph seemed totally in his Christmas spirit. "He's earned it. Granted when in the morning it's real bad, the sun, if the shades are up, are full blast like a hyperbeam coming at ya."

"It's quite a place you got here," she tried to encompass all of the Silph Building in her finger wave up and down. "It's changed since I was last here."

"And when was that?" Mr. Silph asked, tilting his head, curious.

"When Giovanni was still on the board."

"Oh." Mr. Silph had taken the blow with grace. "Well, I suppose us changing this entire building was in response to that, a new start, after all. That is if the renovations ever get done!"

They thought they were alone, but from one side of the room a door opened, revealing a group of ruffled business people all way too happy, too conniving, to be doing any good, emerging from the office's own bathroom.

The group of people first noticed their boss, standing rimrod straight, caught red-handed. Mr. Silph immediately had known who had been the leader of that group as his jovial face became uncomfortable, walking over. "Oh, uh, hello there." Mr. Silph leaned into the group, "Uh, this is Mrs. McCain, she is- was a police officer." It was more of a warning than an introduction as the entire group wizened up, sniffing their noses all the way up to their brains and trying, as best they could, to appear normal.

The leader of that assortment had reached out his hand, a hundred-dollar smile on her. "Uh, hey, name's Ellen." Too bad she was a ten-dollar woman based on what she was doing in somebody else's office, and, by McCain's glance, with thousand-dollar tits in a dress too low.

She put on a counterfeit smile, closing her eyes as she finished the weak shake. In that McCain had seen the glint of white on her nostril. "Missed some." Ellen had wiped her nose again as McCain took a glance down the bathroom to see if anyone else was hiding, the younger men and women she was with shrunk beneath her gaze. McCain walked like a man, and in that haircut was liable to be called a dyke. She was scary, no doubt about it, even without the knowledge she was law enforcement.

Mr. Silph tried to divert attention away from what had obviously just happened. "May I offer you some champagne? Some cake? Anything at all, it's the least we could do to spread the holiday cheer."

McCain had returned to her husband's desk, shrugging as she leaned on it. "No thank you… Though that being said, you do know how to throw a party."

Ellen had chimed in, a little vibration in her step from factors known. "It's sort of a double celebration, wouldn't you agree Mr. Silph?"

Mr. Silph stood on his toes for a moment, rocking. "Ah yes, your husband also has some big part to do with that, Mrs. McCain. I don't know if he told you but Daniel, he helped us close a pretty big deal that'll help us get a leg up on the Devon Corporation. Not that competition isn't good for business, but, this deal is cause for celebration."

Danny had mentioned it to her. Something about working with a Unovan scientist about literal dream science and commercializing it. She couldn't make heads or tails of it.

For all her preparation she couldn't make heads or tails to see the man she had known in heart as her love appear rushed in the doorway, holding a paper folder. It was a surprise for him to see a rival worker and his boss in his office. It was near heart stopping to see his wife.

Halfway through a step he almost tripped, and Ellen and Mr. Silph had stopped making any noise at once watching what they believed to be a tender moment go down.

"Janie." He said her name, soft as a whisper. She puffed up her chest as they locked eyes. For anything she could feel in that moment, she isolated happiness, a grin spreading across her face in that moment. Looking at the other guests he had placed the folder down on the coffee table. "You've met everyone?"

"We've been sticking him like a Cacnea." Mr. Silph again stood on his toes in jest.

The distance between them had once been oceans and regions. Now it was an office, and this time Danny had closed it. A head and a half taller than her, and she liked it, privately, as they embraced as professionally as they could with their audience, the wet, but welcome presence of his lips at her temple fleeting as they parted. Her hand had been at the back of his neck, unconsciously dragging off, not wanting to let go.

"I didn't know you were coming so early."

For someone who dedicated herself to truth and justice, she had to tell a lie. Looking down to the floor and kicking at nothing, "Oh, well, surprise?" She tried baring a smile awkwardly.

"Show her the watch." Ellen chimed in again, hands held up at her heart giddly.

"Later." Danny had said, obviously trying to make it barely of note.

Ellen was offended. "Oh come on, show her! It's a small token of our appreciation for all of his hard work. It's made from the finest Sinnoh metals." The woman had eyed the watch less than she had, in the same glance, eyed Danny. Her husband caught the twitch in her right eye. He had known her all her life and he knew what that meant.

Mr. Silph frankly felt uncomfortable, but it was okay, Janie had her Segway. "Do you mind if I settle in? It was a long flight." She said in her most domestic way, the way that made it sound like she didn't want to be a bother as she looked directly at Mr. Silph.

"Of course!" He agreed, snaking his arm around Ellen, leading them out.

"I'll see you later Danny." Ellen had dragged before the door closed, leaving the McCains, for the first time in half a year, alone.

"Danny?" Janie parroted the woman.

Danny let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "It's Mr. Silph's company culture. He likes to think we're all family and friends and not, well, cut-throat executives." Which he had become, McCain wanted to say. It was a fresh wound though. The conference call with the marriage counselor trod on that topic. "What're you doing here, Jain?"

"Can't I surprise my husband for Christmas?" It was Christmas Eve. "Come on. Santa dropped me off a few moments ago." She tried to placate him by being playful. He didn't fall for it, insulted that she thought he would.

"Locked and loaded?" He knew better what her Hi-Power looked like when it poked out of her clothes by an edge.

Janie never lied, per-se, to her husband. Though there were things she held back. She couldn't lie if she didn't say anything, after all. It was on the counselor's advice that they speak more openly about their professional affairs.

"I- I wanted to come see you early." That was the truth. "But I'm-"

Danny had picked back up his folder and placed it back on his desk. "I'm what?" Aggravation. "What could it be?" He knew the second he saw the gun.

"I'm on the clock right now, Danny." Her shoulders dropped. "I know I should've told you I was coming, even if I'm not supposed to but-"

"But what Janie?" He leaned on the couch closest to his desk as well, mirroring her. "That now the only time I get to see you now is while you're working?"

This wasn't uncalled for. This was just a continuation of a conversation they had dropped a week and a half ago, but not ended, over the phone with a counselor in the crossfire.

"You can't do that to me, Danny." She raised her voice a notch. "I don't get to choose when bad people do bad things in this world." It was only her job to do something about it.

"You sound like you're missing your job, putting it like that all dramatically." He raised in turn, turning his face away for a moment while saying it.

"_I miss you._"

Before they could get any higher those tender words had stopped them.

They locked eyes again. "I miss you too, Jain. Though this is the longest we've been apart, and this is how we see each other again?"

The world wasn't perfect. In the year since the last Christmas Eve and then New Years, resolutions had been set and lost, broken, forgotten underneath the reality of life. "I'm caught up in something, Danny. Something big."

"Bigger than our marriage?"

"Nothing is!" She was glad that was her kneejerk reaction, pushing herself off the desk.

"Well whatever it is it's done something to it!"

Their door had burst open to the sound of giggles. A man and a woman, already half way into each other as they noticed the room was occupied. "Ah, sorry." They shuffled back, closing the door behind them.

"Does everyone like getting blowjobs and doing blow in your room?" Janie had cooled down at the odd event, leaning back against the table as she moved a loose strand of hair behind her ears.

Danny shrugged. "I'm the newest executive. Right of passage, I guess."

It never occurred to Janie until now, but hearing that word: Executive. The Team Rocket admins were all executives on the Silph board along with Giovanni. Daniel McCain was now in the shoes once filled by the likes of Archer, and Proton, and Ariana. Her worries about that were pushed asides. She was thinking about the job with her husband before her.

"Who was that woman," She didn't want to remember that she had a gun at her as she thought about her. "The one with fake tits."

"Ellen." She had introduced herself to McCain and yet she already forgot. Danny had done it again. "She's about fifteen years my senior in both age and position."

"She wants you. Has her eye on you."

Daniel scoffed. Of course he had known, but he never thought of it or helped that thought of hers, gazing again at his wife before him. "She's always like that. In fact, she gets jealous around this time of year."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Usually she thinks herself as God's greatest gift on Earth." That had gotten a chuckle out of both of them. "Besides, the fake tits made it easier to not look at her."

"Good."

"Besides, yours have always been better."

The talk of a married couple who still had their youth, albeit matured, was healthy in this regard. Familiarity on what to say and what not to say, compliments at the right time, the tempo of chemistry both mental, physical, conversational and in any other way… Here, even in their dysfunction, glimmers of something great and beyond, of something that spurred them into this life in their past, came out. Even if it manifested in a comment on Janie's breasts.

"Always been a tad big for the job." She scoffed at him in some good-natured annoyance.

"Good." He parroted. Seconds, moments, half a minute. The silence between them passed. Too fast they threw themselves back into it. "What are you really, doing here, Janie?"

Her vague answer wasn't enough, and maybe that was the reason they had just been short of another fight. "A Ranger was murdered in-region."

Any domestic trouble had been pushed away. "Oh."

Janie nodded. "Yeah." Looking out at the city, she remembered its police force. As the city quadrupled in size, so did its police force. Every action had an equal and opposite reaction, so when the force of the police raised, so did those willing to push back to do what they wanted to do. Crime statistics had become a new datapoint on the nightly news. Murder and kidnapping was the dread on every mother's mind now, at night, regarding their children, and, when the violence relegated to gangs spread to the innocent, Janie knew it would explode.

This city wasn't the same. Celadon had weathered the times too, and she prayed to God that it hadn't been all her fault.

"I didn't hear anything on the news this morning?" Danny had closed the gap between them, sitting on his desk as well now, shoulder to shoulder with her.

"You wouldn't have." As Danny had shared Silph secrets with her, and she would hope that he'd continue to, she would share secrets to him. It wasn't right, but they had their sins. "It was in an Indigo League black site, near Cerulean. One of our Rangers got shot and killed trying to warn some Pokémon that they were being hunted."

"Did you know them?"

Janie shook her head. "No. But I know he was a good man: Preston Parker."

"I figured."

"Yeah?"

"All Rangers I know are good people."

"…But you only know one?"

"Exactly." His flirting was corny and light hearted and stupid. Though she craved it as Bulbasaur craved the sun.

"Goes deeper than that." She turned around, taking out her Styler, flipping through notes both old and new, her's and Parker's. "Silph Co. is involved. I think."

Danny was many things. None of them brash to yell out. "Go on."

She nodded, thankful for him to give her time to explain. "Master Balls were find at the crime scene. Dozens. Broken, thankfully, by the Pokémon that were being hunted, but Master Balls nonetheless."

Danny had held one of them before, used of them before, and it had been a privilege to test. The power he felt with it, he once tried to describe to his wife, was the same as a gun he imagined. She disagreed, but it perhaps was close. He had a question. "What Pokémon would be able to break them? Master Balls are some pretty serious shit."

"I can't tell you. It's for your safety."

He looked annoyed but shook his head. "Go on, Janie." Whereas she liked to call people hun, or honey, sweetheart, or baby, she had told Danny that her pleasure came from hearing him say her name.

"Parker was, as far as I could tell, trying to track down who exactly would be using the Master Balls, he knew that they were being produced, but as for why? Well, he found a lead, and tailed them to the crime scene."

"Them?"

She took a breath, careful of where she was. She wouldn't put it past Silph to bug the office. Still it was no matter. "Team Rocket."

Danny's eyes widened. "Good God."

The original team that made gangs like them fashionable in this world. Organized crime syndicates modeling themselves after the order and goals of Giovanni's manifestation.

"I know it sounds crazy but, uh, they were trying to track down Mewtwo… or rumors of." She was wishy washy on how much she wanted to admit.

"I thought it died at Cinnabar?" Silph had been implicated in its creation, researchers using spare development funds to funnel into a private lab at Cinnabar, fueled by the now exploded geothermal source.

She shrugged. "There's rumors about, rumors with some serious money backing it," She reached back into her research this morning, "Some people have a price on their head and Rocket thought it legit.."

Any amount of spoiler kids had asked their well-to-do parents about catching a very specific Pokémon for them. Hell, chances were one or two people in that office had partaken in the Pokémon Trade's black market. Trading Pokémon hadn't been like trading cars or cellphones for upgrades. Pokémon for Pokémon was the only way it worked, officially, anything else had to have been taxed or documented. Still, big government wasn't as all-encompassing to stop the day to day trades of neighbors and of the like, and they wouldn't be able to catch the section of the trade that dealt with money for Pokémon.

Benign requests for Pokémon Professor sanctioned starters to legends themselves had been on the dark web, as the grander the target brought in a higher price, bounty hunters and trainers had made a market of it.

"How much?"

McCain listed off the price and Danny had reached back into his head, just to compare, how much the very skyscraper they were in costed. Something involving that much money? That much power if Mewtwo was contained?

Perhaps that was one of the problems that came with the dissolution of Rocket, and indeed any of the criminal gangs: The individual with their own goals would be far more elusive than an easily boxed gang.

"Maybe they're trying to capture… things that require Master Balls to either fund a new version of Rocket, or use the Pokémon to do so, but, whatever it is, it isn't good." She glanced at her Styler's watch. She had ended her shift at the station at 3AM when Lunick put her own her way to Kanto. She more or less stayed away on the plane trip over, no reprieve between Cerulean and Celadon, and then, here. She'd been awake for almost a full twenty four hours already counting the shift she had just taken before she'd came to Kanto, and it was seen on her. In her eyes, in her hair, in the drop of her head. "I need help with this, sweetheart." Her voice had been low and tired, rightfully so.

Danny had nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "Sounds like it."

"Any leads you could give me, well, we'll cover you with anonymity and whistleblower laws."

"What?"

"Master Balls, Danny. No one can produce them except this company and its assets."

Danny's mouth was open for a moment, tilting his head at his wife. "I'm in Field, Janie. The Pokéball and Materials Group is separate."

"But you can look, can't you?"

"At the cost of my job, Janie! If I start looking around then well," he motioned to his office, to everything he had earned in that last half-decade. "It ain't none of my business."

"If Silph is at all behind any of what's happening, this Rocket appearance, the murder, anything, then they'll drag everyone down with it. If it's true, you just have to do what's right."

"What evidence do you have, Janie? What could you possibly-"

She whipped out her Styler again and showed him the photos: broken Master Balls, astrewn in a deep cave, and, most strikingly of all, cradled by a dead man. "Someone died for this, Danny. A Pokémon Ranger. Like me. Least you could do is look into it for me."

How many times had Danny seen a dead body? Never, until today. Not until he saw Preston Parker's chest splotched with a red pool of blood on his uniform, his hands curled around a Master Ball made by the company he worked for. He replayed his last few spoken words. Was he really defending his company? Had he become that much of a corporate cog that, when his wife of nearly a decade of law enforcement experience came to him with a body that hadn't even been cold yet and implicated said company he had spoken for it?

Truth and ideals. He remembered the N's manifesto, broadcast to the world. He was still a criminal on the run, but the words he spoke for his crusade for a new world had rung true for him, and many people like him. The truth was written in blood, in broken pieces of an item exclusively created by the company he worked for. His ideals of his life could not be ingrained with that.

He brought both hands to his face, palming it, dragging it down with his lips. "You're gonna be the death of me, you know that?" Their wedding bands shined in the dying light of Saffron, the glint caught in McCain's eyes as she rose her eyebrow. He didn't mean it. "Just didn't think my life would be this way, dear."

Janie tightened her jaw at that. Neither did she. "No matter what happens though, after tonight, this case…" She smoothed her hand over his husband's worn ones. A long time ago they had been rubbed raw and rough by his travels, but now they had been softened by the domestic life. It was McCain's turn to have nature on her hand. "After this, I promise to start being better for you."

"For us…" Danny corrected, remembering their counselor making note of such efforts being communal. They felt stupid following that advice, but it was worth it. He leaned in close, standing her knees as his hands placed themselves on the, parting her legs so he could get close to her. "Promise?"

Her hands naturally went up to his face as he approached, feeling that big scruffy beard she had loved on him. "Promise." She didn't even know if there was enough sound to it, but it didn't matter, when inches became centimeters and then millimeters. When their breaths had been tasted and their crotches way too close together without feeling the familiar heat.

Their soft breathing had filled that quiet room as Danny paused just short of feeling her lips on his, far removed from the party but not so. That was what felt electrifying as Danny had shifted himself and held her sides a bit tighter than he would've in public. The only other time he had held her like that was-

"Mr. McCain." A voice had shoved the two of them apart as they were millimeters away from breaking in his new office with a kiss, door creaking open. They had been afraid it was Hops but then again it hadn't been anything he hadn't heard, seen, or, frankly enough, smelled.

"!" The McCains had grunted in surprise, Danny backing off as Janie slid to a stand, eyes at the floors and arms behind her back.

"Oh, uh-" It was an intern, twenty-something. Danny knew him as his assistant. "Mr. Silph wants you to say a word to the troops when you can."

Danny had coughed a few times, unflustering himself and tightening his tie. "Oh, yeah sure." His assistant had backed off from the awkwardness as best he could, leaving two frustrated adults affirmed that, at the very least, the spark of foreplay and passion was still alive for them.

"Hey," Danny tipped up Janie's head by her chin with a finger, allowing nothing more than a better angle to get in a quick peck at the very least. It was times like this that McCain had totally agreed that maybe the domestic life with him was what was best for all of them. Then she remembered that she was a public defender at heart for some reason, boiling inside of her. She had her moments of clarity in a different point of view however. "I got you something!" Danny said as if a child, scampering off to his desk and swinging out a drawer.

It was a quaint white box, and before McCain could harbor some sort of mystery of it Danny had slid it open, revealing the bane equal only to fruit cake in that time of year.

A purposefully ugly, overdesigned, stitched together Christmas sweater: The borders of holly, trees, and snow flakes were on top of a disgustingly red background, all of it framing this:

**ALL I WANT**

**THIS CHRISTMAS**

**IS**

**CHUUUUUU**

Maybe if she did actually celebrate Hanukkah or actually practiced her family's ancestral Judaic faith, she might've avoided it.

No, all she got was a giant Pikachu face in the background of those words in an ensemble known as an ugly Christmas sweater, a Delibird border framing it all.

"I hate it." She was both being truthful and sarcastic.

"I know you would." Danny had winked at her, throwing the rather hefty affair at her, only to get her guard down for another embrace: the scratchy linen between them cushioning. "Hey, I know it ain't exactly on good occasion but…" He pulled back, holding her shoulders. "I'm glad you're home for Christmas."

What would her life had been like if she wasn't stubborn? If she hadn't raged out of the Celadon PD that fateful day and instead worked at her family's diner? What if she hadn't wanted to use that sorrow and rage filled in her by her mistakes to do a better good for the world then she could at Celadon?

At the very least, she hoped and prayed, her marriage wouldn't be on such shaky ground.

"You know I was coming back this year anyway." she said, quietly.

He wanted to say he couldn't believe it till he saw it. He wanted to say that it didn't matter. He wanted to say he wanted her to stay this time.

Nothing came from his mouth, and McCain had hoped herself on her own that he had said any of those things. Only the sad look of people with the rest of their lives ahead of them.

"Use my bathroom, freshen up. I'll be back in a bit and we can talk about all of this… stuff." He turned away and was out the door before she could respond, the crowd outside cheering at his appearance as, before the door closed, a green figure slid in: Hops.

"Stuff… yeah."

Hops rose an eyebrow at her as he checked out the office better, with Danny gone. He was expecting something.

"It went well." She said as convincingly as she could. He rose his non-existent eyebrow higher. "I swear you spoiled salamander!"

There was nothing threatening about her as she cradled the ugly sweater in her arms, and Hops only huffed in amusement, finding the couch and laying himself across it, stalk of wheat still in his mouth.

Danny could practically live in this office, McCain found out, rounding into his bathroom and finding a rather hotel-like assortment: A standing showing taking one corner as a shitter with more than one button more than her liking stood opposite of the wall sized window and vanity.

With as she understood work at this level, when projects and contracts were on the line, executives were expected to.

She knew exactly why Danny got the job, both when he started and now in his current position. He was smart: technically and pragmatically when it came to Pokémon and trainerdom. When Silph offered to sponsor him during one of the larger tournaments, plastering his competition shirt with their branding, Danny didn't ask for money in exchange: he asked for a job.

He went all of Kanto and Johto testing products and providing field research for them. By the time he turned 25 it was only natural that they offered one of their most enterprising employees a job in the office, close to his home. To him it would've, at least at the time, been his dream.

That was until she had left the Celadon PD and sought out a new career, an ocean away…

No other PD in Kanto or Johto wanted her. No other PD at all, within the regions, after learning about what she pioneered and how she decried it afterwards. The Rangers were more than willing however to take her in for her talents, and she saw herself having no choice.

She believed in the Rangers though, nowadays. A half decade with them did her good in some moral sense: saw the world through the eyes of people more in touch with life and the Earth. The crimes she stopped her moral and ethical ones. Not ones of law and politics.

* * *

**December 24th**

**7:45 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

Lunick Stallone had rung in her mind as she opted out of a full shower, wetting a towel and patting herself down, disrobing from the waist up. He was a younger man and yet her CO, and the career he probably came from hadn't the slightest thing to do with law enforcement. He annoyed her in that aspect, but in any other way he was fine. He wasn't unqualified, and he had been worldly, lived a life.

Noticing some lines of powder on the toilet seat she had hoped been of the cosmetic variety, she had taken a toilet paper square and wiped it away as she remembered her CO's advice.

"I was in Hoenn during a vacation paid for by Steven Stone himself." He recounted one night as he led a three man-expedition out north of Fiore to set up more outposts for Rangers and adventurers who liked to venture the mountainlands between Fiore and Sinnoh. "And in order to maximize all the nightlife I could, I figured this out." She recounted very vividly Lunick throwing off his boots and socks and dumping his feet into the river before sundown. "You can be wide awake at the end of the day if you wash your feet and walk around barefoot a bit."

Like most things, the damn jockey had been right as she used the towel to wipe down her feet, callouses unfeeling from a world walked over it felt like, shoes and socks put asides for now. His office was rugged fortunately.

So, McCain had used her husband's accommodations readily, wiping herself down from the day as well. The breaths of air she took in felt more filling, she felt at least, putting her bra back on and eyeing, not her undershirt and flannel, her holster sitting atop them, but rather the ugly Christmas sweater.

Yes, she did hate it. That was the point though, and the least she could do was indulge her husband for his troubles. Maybe he would've gotten sick of it and tore it off her, she thought vaguely herself, it would've done them both good in the end.

When she emerged from his office bathroom Hops had spit out his wheat stalk, laughing in his chirping way, pointing to her as if he had a crowd.

"Eat it up, you bet your ass if Danny bought something like this for me, he has something like this back at the house, and I'm sure Coda would love to put you in it."

The name of his "sister", it stopped his thoughts. Coda the Jolteon would've loved to see her little brother in a Christmas sweater, and if Danny hadn't she would've more than likely bought a gift for him herself.

Homelife reminded her of something rather urgent: Her Operator who always talked about his own. It was probably a good idea to give him a status update, going back to her holster and drawing her Styler into its comm function. She had been so used to the switchboard operator that she had listed off her identity and credentials before realizing there had been no sound coming from it.

She blinked several times dumbfoundedly. The Stylers were hooked up to satellites when they weren't being bounced off the cell towers. The only other time the reception on them hadn't been serviceable was when she was dealing with an electric-type overcrowding problem deep in a cave. Her Styler still worked, that much she knew as she went to the diagnostics screen.

ERR_NETWORK_RETRIEVAL | CANCLED SIGNAL | CHECK/CHANGE SURROUNDINGS | ERR_NETWORK_RETRIEVAL

There was a landline mounted on the wall of the bathroom, and she was going to go for that, but a sound erupted first:

One she had forgotten how long it'd been since she hadn't been the cause of it.

Cracks, concussive thumps, the snap of air around glass breaking. Each sound she felt in her lungs as they chattered away beyond those walls.

Hops popped his head out from the couch toward the closed door, both of them looking at each as they heard the sound of screaming.

"Lights!" She ordered him, and all of Hops' swagger had faded away as he dove for the light switch in the room, retreating back behind the couch as McCain was faced with a world that forced her to make decisions – NOW.

Going to the door she had thanked the architects that they opened in the direction of the party:

All she had got as she opened the door a sliver was the back of something she had seen in visions and memories, history and news clips:

Men in black. A red R on their backs. The dangerous difference between them and the ones Red and Lyra dealt with: One Rocketeer had turned around to breach into one office, in his arms a weapon that came from a region so far away that people had forgotten it existed: The Rusulka Region. It and Orre shared the distinction of being one of the only Regions left to maintain any firearm industry at all, and of it, in Rusulka at least, it resulted in one of the finest one-man weapon systems the world had seen since its advent: The Kalashnikov Assault Rifle.

In their heels like their predecessors dangerous Pokémon, Houndour and Mightyena and Raticate, had all followed and enforced their wills, throwing people out of their office mid-copulation or mid-cocaine snort. Toward the garden McCain could see more Rocketeers and Pokémon, shooting up into the ceiling and forcing the partygoers into the depression. Desperately, desperately, she tried looking for her Danny. There was no time though. Spotting down the hall had been the access to the stairwell. That was her ticket.

Danny's office had been the last in the line in that hallway, she using the time to close the door and run for her holster.

The Hi-Power, her pistol. If she took it, if she ran out there and started shooting? She'd be dead. She'd be dead and anyone caught in the crossfire too before she took down more than one, more harm than good done.

Thumbing her back pocket she still felt the two mags seated in it. For a moment she thought leaving the gun. _Why? _She asked herself. Maybe if they knew someone was running about unarmed, they wouldn't hunt them down and leave them be as the did what they wanted. No, no, they would come looking for its owner regardless. No one carried without knowing how to use it. No time to hide it.

"Fuck!" She screamed to herself silently as she exited the bathroom again, forgetting where she had put her shoes and socks, instead holding her holster harness in her hands instead. Only now she realized that the badge had still been on her. Only now she realized why she was reacting the way she was.

A small fist hit her side.

It was Hops. She looked out again, and hoped the darkness concealed the creak as she again peered through a sliver of door opening. She might've been made if it hadn't been for the office next door: the screams of a woman bursting out topless with a man pulling up his pants drawing the attention of the male grunt who was making his way to her door.

"Hey dude! Look at this bitch!" One of the Rocketeers said to the man too close to McCain, that man moving away and back.

Decision time, and decision time now.

If Erica could judge her for being a trainer for how well she treated Hops, then she would've judged her as well with how well she made hard decisions.

"Stay with Danny. Hops." She winced even saying it.

The words said to him as she closed the door again was urgent, too fast, only by the situation.

"What?" He responded back. "You have a gun, and I have-!" The blades of grass on his arms solidified and sharpened. Hops had killed before. A fact he never dwelled on. In the animal kingdom kill or be killed was less a morality struggle and more a trial of right to survive.

"You have to stay with him Hops."

"Why?!" He hopped up to her, seized her hands and knelt her down. This time she said it slow and smooth. She wanted him to understand exactly what she was saying. "I'm not letting you go out there to die-!"

"Hey! Hey! Listen to me!" She was on her knees by her own accord and his face was held by her hands, the grips of her pistol caught between her right hand and his cheek. "I love you Hops baby. But I trust no one else on this Earth to take care of my dumb ass husband than you. Please."

"I don't care about that!" How natural they spoke to each other in moments like this. It was if they were speaking the same language all their life as he bared his teeth at her. "I love you too much to let you go off and do whatever alone!"

He knew what she was planning, somewhat, just by the air about her.

"If you get taken hostage now, they won't hurt you! As a hostage you're safer then running with me." Hops wanted to debate with her so bad, but he couldn't as she made the decision for him, praying, betting with her own life that this was the best one. "I love you like my own child, you know that, but please. _Please."_

Her words were rushed, but they were honest and true. For all his years alive and all his years he could've called McCain his own, he had known her to never treat him wrongly. He trusted his life with hers, and vice versa. She was the closest thing to a mother to him, and for that, if all his life was building up to this, then yes, he would do it for her.

_She was _his mother.

He was her Pokémon.

Green arms wrapped around her neck and, for a moment, all was okay in the world. It was the tightest hug he had ever given, and it was the tightest hug that she had given back. It was also a quickest. "I'll be back. _**I promise**_." Not even enough time to get teary eye'd at a possible, final goodbye.

_No._ She couldn't allow herself to think like that.

Without even a response she had went back to Danny's door, only to open a peek, and, seeing none of the gunmen looking her direction, she bolted out and into the stairway access.

When the Rocketeers came into Danny's office, all they found was a Grovyle sleeping alone on a couch. Guns aimed at him, a Houndour growling to reinforce, he only raised his arms and cooly was collected back at the garden with the rest of the hostages.

In that mess: a man he hadn't exactly always been a fan with, nowadays, but who he was charged with taking care of. Huddling by Mr. Silph, it had been Daniel McCain, as dazed and shocked as anyone else.

Still, he had his priorities about him as Hops revealed himself in that mass of people at his legs. He shot to his shoulders:

"Where is she Hops?!" He whisper yelled at him, begging as people continued to scream, gunfire destroying the ceiling above. "Where is she?!"

Hops looked back at Danny, into his soul hopefully. He couldn't answer, shaking his head. All that meant was she wasn't here, and he hoped to Arceus that she knew what she was doing.


	3. 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM

**December 24th**

**7:30 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

A promise of peace. That was the rough translation of the small semi-truck's logo that rolled in front of the jewelry store that the young, red haired man had huddled in front of for the last few hours, the shotgun seat flying open and offered to him without a word, the second the door opening revealing the sound of Christmas music. It had darkened in the young man's wait, and a burst of light from inside the truck's cabin blinded him.

It had felt very much like the first time they found him. Wandering the streets of Goldenrod at night, a few months ago. It had been a white van at that time however, now a semi-truck with weighted trailer in the back that spoke to them actually pulling through.

"Why'd you kill him?" His voice was still that of a young man, angry at the world. He spoke to the driver: a blue haired man he had known all of his life. He had worked for his father. Now he had worked for him.

"He didn't give us a choice." He spoke like a posh man, not the criminal he had become. "I didn't pull the trigger anyway."

The truck sat idle for a moment as the young man shut the door. "So now we're escalating?"

"It was a plan we were going to carry out with anyway, down the line. Now it's just a means to an end." The blue haired man didn't even turn his head to speak to the boy. It was so odd, to the boy, to see him out of uniform. Though now in his coat and suit, he looked dignified.

"Did it always include me?"

The man didn't answer. "I'm glad you're on our side, this time, **Silver**." Silver thought that Archer Nostra had finally turned to give him a handshake, and he wouldn't have taken it. Though it wasn't a hand he had offered: instead it was an arm.

A pistol. 9mm. Suppressed.

"What?" Silver had looked at the item.

"Just in case. We signed you up for many reasons, but being on point wasn't one of them."

Silver had looked at the weapon with unease. His father, and then the man before him, had elected not to use firearms in the gangs. Such weapons brought bloodshed unnecessary. Zubat or Houndour were enough to persuade and hurt at the end of the day. What had changed then? Silver knew it deep in his mind however: it all changed when the police started shooting first.

"Are we expecting trouble?"

"Do you know how to use one?" Archer answered his question with his own. Silver furrowed his eyebrows, unhappy, but nodded. Yeah, he learned how. At one point in his life he didn't want to rely on his Pokémon to defend himself, or to cause pain. In his darkest moments he thought that maybe a gun might've worked, but even he in his wisdom at the time never stooped that low. He nabbed the pistol away, finding the safety and stuffing it into his belt. They carried a pistol like that in Orre, so he had read. He read a lot about Orre, ever since his father was incarcerated there.

A series of thumps had come from behind their heads: it was the people in the back. Only then did Silver realize their cargo had been anything but peaceful, and they were telling them to hurry up.

They did as Silver grit his teeth and sucked his mouth dry, Archer putting the truck in gear and circling the block one last time, making sure no one in that evening hour was primed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In front of the truck had been a smaller sedan, leading the way as the two vehicles rounded the Silph building once, and then once again, until at the very last they had turned over to cross into the large plaza of the Silph building, following the driveway that had split off into two ways: a circular affair which passed in front of its entrance, and then another which went downward into a parking garage meant for employees and delivery.

The truck had gone underground as the sedan split off, rolling to a stop in front.

The concrete catacombs of the parking garage beneath the Silph building had swallowed them in artificial light. Silver had remembered his youth; how many times had he slept as a vagrant in one of them? His memories were not fond of them, he glancing up, catching several cameras along the ceiling. He had been told of the plan prior, he knew that they didn't need to worry about them as Archer pulled into reverse and placed the truck against a loading dock, keys out, truck settling down.

The lobby had been still as silent as it had been for the last hour, only those who had opted out of the Silph celebrations early had graced it as the security guard dazed off, lazily looking at that continuing Pokémon Battle on his small TV. With a glance up he had seen the Sedan past the glass doors of the building, two doors being thrown open on it as, as the guard presumed, two late comers had made their cue. The sky had been quickly darkening, and who was he to blame for those who wanted to pre-game? Certainly, no cushy office party would be a place to get loaded on booze.

Two younger men had entered the building, bundled up with coats, one particularly chattier than the other as they seemed to be in the middle of a discussion. "The reason why I always preferred Hilbert's particular battle style was that he was always partial to physicality. He made his Pokémon fight, not follow particular ability or movesets. A good one-two punch," he had demonstrated his own by punching at the air, his short cut hair bobbing along with his glasses as his companion, stone faced, simply approached the desk with him. "Will always be better than a complicated move."

For a moment the guard had thought he might've had an opinion then and there, to just weigh in on whatever they were talking about. The last thing to go through his head however had been a 9mm round, pulled out smoothly from the stone-faced man's jacket. He could've never saw it happen: the way it was levied at his forehead and then the trigger pulled, the man's body jerking back, stopped only by the backing of his swivel chair. There wouldn't be a significant blood splatter, the bullet had been small enough to not do such.

"Nice." The chattier man had commented, the dead guard stopping his twitching as he had hopped over the security desk, his feet landing on the bod, fully collapsing it to the floor. In the same move a radio had been pulled out from his suit pants, spoken into. "We're in."

Those magic words had meant so many things to do, transmitted back down to the semi-truck. From the pockets of each and every man in on the plan, a balaclava, a mask, had been drawn out, pulled over their faces. It was time.

Chatty had passed over the dead man's body into the backroom behind the counter, the security office controlling perhaps way too much here.

It was a fault of Silph's however to not concentrate security further up. Chances were that as long as they had been cut off at the entrance, all would be fine.

Though that was account for brute force, not the smooth cut that was coming tonight.

Slipping into the chair in front of the main security console Chatty had done his work, Stoneface readying his pistol again as he had cleared the lobby entirely. No one else; privacy enough for him to finally put on his own mask and reloading his pistol like the professional he was.

"Stay behind me." Archer commanded the boy, his fist banging behind him, hitting the trailer, the great sound of its door being opened revealing only this:

Work smarter, not harder. As was the saying. Archer had reasoned why not both?

Clad in nostalgia, but with an edge above, 10 men and women had appeared out the back. Gear bags, hard cases, had all be strapped across their backs or in their arms, but perhaps most strikingly to any casual observer had been this as they stepped out into the light:

Guns. Lots of guns.

Submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns and pistols, each one of them had come packing. Silver had been surprised as the two had dropped out of the cabin to join them. "Where'd you…?"

Archer had given himself a self-satisfied twitch of his nose. "You make a lot of friends in prison."

For a moment, Silver had entertained himself to the idea that these too had been his friends. Though the likelihood of finding these violent men and women with this particular skillset had been low when they all had either grabbed their belts or pockets and drew out those telltale spherical containers that-

Without words, in a flash of bright energy, these men and women had been revealed: They too had been trainers.

On the loading dock there was ample room for the Pokémon unleashed to stretch their legs.

There seemed to be one brought along for every person, nearly ten Pokémon ushered forth, the like of which Silver had known very dearly. They were Pokémon that had been used, that had survived the trials of a criminal world. They were more fulfilling of their names than most: monsters. He had seen many amongst the ranks of his father's criminal syndicate, though none as formidable as those seen today. A Charizard, scars on its orange skin, had been the largest sort there, barely fitting on the loading dock as it cricked its wings, the flames from its mouth bubbling like an oven, ready to go. Elsewhere a Golem had shook off some of its rocky shell, gathering it up into its hands, ready to throw or use as it saw fit. This drew the ire of the Arbok, it hissing down on it as it growled in return.

Besides him, Silver had heard Archer pop his own Pokéball.

Confronted with it, he should've felt heat, but instead he felt the cold.

He knew this Pokémon when she was just a pup. The Houndoom that was so well behaved, and yet so imposing despite the many Pokémon there, had once, in some way, been his.

The Pokémon locked eyes with the son of its former master, recognizing him.

Indeed, that same recognizing had spread, from Pokémon to person as Silver and Archer had joined their men and women on the loading dock. They all had looked to Archer first, but then Silver.

There was something to say about bloodlines, about inheritance and the divine right of kings. Silver felt the vertigo and nostalgia combine in his stomach like an illness, seeing so many supposed Grunts of his father before him as if it had been years ago, reliving history.

One of the Grunts, a woman, had muttered to her Bewear, only to repeat out loud. "You sure the Son isn't a plant? He's pretty high-profile to bring along to a job, that and he's dating the woman who stopped you last time around, Archer."

Even with his mask anyone with a knowledge of either Team Rocket, or Champion Lyra, had known who he was.

"He's out of sight." Archer had said, tightening his leather gloves as he checked his belt. "Besides, he's necessary. Ariana is still missing and we don't know if Mars has enough of the bio-trace."

"Huh?" Silver's interjection had only been cut out as a commanding voice had taken hold, even Archer looking to the speaker.

"Enough. Let's go." The speaker had been the only one without a Pokémon, but he had been the most heavily armed, a large battle rifle in his hands as gestured past the double doors into the service hallways of Silph.

From the back of the truck several more hardcases had been wheeled out, Silver barely catching the -XPLOSIVE lettering from beneath the rag the tarp they were hidden under. It was go time.

"Maintain brevity." Archer had nodded. "May, Serena, take point."

That part of the plan Silver hadn't been clued into particularly. Were their names really…?

The man with the battle rifle had responded, moving forward, all of them walking in his wake. They moved with a purpose. A purpose only the luckiest in their lives had known; with a weight in their boots and a destination in mind. The service hallways beneath Silph had been concrete and corridors, pipes lining them all going to the different departments further up the building. Two men had split off as they found the wiring to the telephones.

Elsewhere another group had split off towards the power lines as the rest had stopped in front of an iron door, curiously out of place.

Silver knew what it was as it stood solitarily in that inconspicuous spot.

A hand scanner had been mounted on its frame.

"Try it." Archer had told him as the group took their turns looking it up and down, silver in its sheen.

Silver reached out, pressing his palm to the reader, only to be denied outright in a shrill beep.

It wasn't anything that was unexpected; that response. What had been unexpected was-

"Hey! Who are-?!" A female voice had appeared around the corner of that corridor. It was a maintenance worker, however she was unable to complete her sentence as the heavily armed gunman raised his battle rifle in a snap and cut her off at her throat, her body folding to the ground as the unfamiliar crack of a gunshot in an enclosed space had made Silver twitch in his own shoes. In the moment of concussion that came, Silver hadn't known how to process the sound of a woman dying, sucking on her own blood, mere feet from him. All he could do was stare at the ground and let her peter out.

This was the price he had to pay to save a life.

As long as he hadn't been the one pulling the trigger, he was fine. That's what he told himself.

They had already killed a Pokémon Ranger; a law enforcement figure of all things, every body after that was inconsequential. He had to think of this like the young man he used to be:

_"It doesn't matter who or what. I'm going to be strong and wipe out the weak."_

Spoken in another life, to a different trainer, after one of his first losses. How harshly he spoke of the Pokémon that failed him that day, he had regretted it, and yet there was a time and place for all things. There was a time where he had to fall back into his father's legacy, surely.

Several of the gunmen had moved up, over the body of the woman as her eyes rolled back in her head and she laid there, dead, blood pooling.

May, the heavily armed gunman with the battle rifle, had raised his left hand up and tweaked it, rotating a bit with his fist as some had split off to clear the basement, the entire group, moving past the body, reconnoitering at the elevator access.

_"Telephone lines cut."_

_ "Backup power generators have been rerouted away from target."_

Archer had heard the status reports over his radio as the first of them had entered the elevator with what Pokémon could fit, the rest standing by and waiting for their turn. Silver, finding himself in the center of all of it, had felt certainly cramped, both in breath and in situation. The elevator ride had barely started as it had been brought to the lobby, Archer and another, a seemingly unbothered man, ruggedly handsome in the way his dirty blonde hair was tied, followed.

Meeting the two who had come into the entrance, all was going well. Chatty had company however, a used Pokéball hanging off of his pocket as-

The orange pixie of a ghost, shaped like a spinning top almost, had been over his shoulder. Silver and Archer hadn't been the only ones with history in that building.

"Status?" Archer asked, a keycard handed to him by the stone-faced man, out from the dead guard's jacket.

Chatty turned around from the back room, exiting out, gesturing to his Pokémon. "Well, Silph seems to have specifically built security systems to disregard any work I did when _**we **_used to work here." The man had meant all three of them, sweat forming on his dark skin. The back room didn't have air conditioning and it had a lot of computers, understandably. His Rotom however had been less than bothered, if not annoyed, chirping in electric bytes, sounding of static shocks.

Archer hadn't understood but Chatty did.

"Rotom can interface with some standard outlets, regular desktop computers and all that, but there's some software and hardware blockages that has been codified to directly block Rotom from entering the system."

Again, a barrier, but not an unexpected one. Archer ran a hand cooly through his hair. "You just had to storm out like you did, didn't you Lex?" Lex had no name to assume, no codename. He wouldn't be interacting with the hostages at all if it all went to plan. Both he and the Rotom had seem unbothered.

"Nothing brute forcing and good ole hacking can't help with." To prove his point he had bumped the guard's body out the chair finally and worked over his computer, said body being dragged into the backroom by both Stoneface and Handsome. Handsome had gone further however, taking the man's jacket and only to don it himself. He was going to be front man for as long as whatever was happening upstairs went on. He would be there if someone unexpected showed up.

_"Now Chairman Rose's activism into making the Gym Leader a more active public figure isn't unfounded, as independently many Gym Leaders abroad, like Misty Waterflower in Cerulean City, take it upon themselves to reach out to the media and public. What's different with Chairman Rose however is that such interaction is prerequisite-"_

The TV on the front desk went on as Archer had taken the key card to the front door, letting Stoneface out again to grab their car and drive it down to the parking garage.

One last gaze out those glass doors. Of the renovation of Silph Tower, the doors had remained the same at least. Archer had felt a pang of years lost for a moment, remembering how many days he had gone in and out through them. Only his future lay ahead however, swiping the key card down on a reader, metallic locks seizing the glass doors closed.

"Locking all elevators down, except one. You'll have 80 through the top floor accessible. Merry Christmas." Lex had been more than proud as his Rotom hopped into the computer after him, seeing what it could find for a short moment. Archer could only give a brisk smile as he handed off the keycard to the new frontman, tightening his collar and settling into the chair as Lex followed Archer now.

When the doors sealed, the air had gone cold in that cramped elevator. Out of necessity the guns had been pointed up, to make room, though it offered Silver the look of their manipulation, the force of the elevator making its way up like a pencil dialing in a final period felt. Guns were cocked, locked, loaded. The point of no-return had been long gone, and any rebellious thoughts Silver had? They were no use.

He felt a brush against his leg.

It was the Houndoom, finding a place to sit as the elevator quickly passed the 50th floor.

He was five again. In the luxury apartment that Ariana had been given by Giovanni in order to give his mother a place to be nearby and raise him. The two had been absent that day, the only two living beings in that entire expansive space being a scared child and a pup. What was a Pokémon to do but curl around him in bed? Keeping him warm? Keeping him safe?

Life had changed them both, but once, long ago, they knew they didn't want to turn out this way.

The Houndoom had leaned into his leg, giving Silver a flash of warmth momentarily, her snout poking at the Pokéball at his hip, covered by his belt.

She could sense the pain, the _sickness_, in it.

He looked down at her and, as quiet as he could, explained. "It's why I'm here."

Every few floors the elevator would stop, Lex getting out, only to plant small device onto the nearest wall from his pockets, a green LED blinking as he flipped a switch on each of them. This repeated every ten floors, adding on anxious minutes to the travel up. It was a quiet ride up, the music in that elevator having been some non-copyrightable Christmas tune.

"Silver," Archer had spooked Silver for a second as he beckoned his name, not even turning, drawing the revolver from his belt. "Stay with Lex. It's our show now."

The elevator had arrived at its destination finally, and how blissfully unaware the party had been when they saw it from the elevator: going off on their merry way not noticing what would certainly be, in a certain view, tonight's entertainment.

Out from an unseen hallway a man had emerged, a cross between an outdoorsman and a businessman, doing a bad impression in both directions.

_"Daniel McCain everyone!"_

There was an applause from the crowd as he came into them, having been noticed, hoisted up onto a chair as if ready to give a speech.

That was when Archer had made his move, slowly, slowly, the men and women and Pokémon in that elevator shuffling out laterally along the wall where the elevator had been, quietly, quietly until they all had left and that Daniel McCain had been the only one facing the direction to see them.

When the look in his eye had gone from bewilderment to dread, that was when Archer raised his gun up into the ceiling, and all hell had broken loose.

* * *

**December 24th**

**7:48 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

The cold steel of the stairwell had been unkind to her calloused feet, pricking at her like fire, though she wasn't thinking of that as she ran herself upstairs, one floor up: Floor 84. If she could just get to a landline or something, she might've been okay, whatever was happening might've been better off. She nearly collided with the door into 84, throwing it open, only to see the backs of two men in black carting into boxes, guns strapped around their back. She nearly cursed but it would've killed her as she closed the door back silently and ran herself up another flight of stairs, breathing through her teeth as gunfire echoed from where she came.

Her leather holster had been only over one arm, the droopy Christmas sweater fluttering about her form damn near irritatingly as she took flight, sleeves too long riding up again and again to her hands as McCain kept trying to roll them up.

She skipped floor 85, putting distance between her and the men in black. It only then clicked where she had seen those uniforms before: grey belts, all black everything else.

_God dammit. God dammit._

Her thoughts damned everyone that would listen as once again history repeated, her feet moving on their own as they had simply climbed up, finding the door to Floor 88, bringing her pistol up to bear with one hand as the other went to the door's handle, slowly, slowly easing it open.

She had written this report before: How the Silph Tower occupation by the original Team Rocket might've been solved if the security guards on staff carried and the Saffron PD had a SWAT team. Now she was living it as once again, as far as she could tell, Team Rocket had come for the Silph Tower.

She saw no one through her view of the door, hurriedly opening it and closing it behind her before she fully became coherent of where this was: A lot of the floors between 80 and the new additions of 100 had still been going through renovations. Floor 88 had been one of them: blank and still as if a construction site, exposed metal frames and the tools left behind by workers present as she found something among them:

A landline on a drafting desk.

"Yes!" She had almost yelled out as she ran for it, minding the dust or the debris that had sank into her feet as she ran the distance, turning over right she looked at the elevator access hall, gun turned toward there as she approached the desk to her back, covering her sector.

When she felt her hip touch the desk, her left hand went back, finding the head of the old telephone only to hear something worse than any number of wild Pokémon roaring at her to leave their territory: silence.

"You cut the fucking landlines too?" She swore to herself, swearing more through her teeth as she heard her breathing for the first time: it was rampant, she closing her mouth and consolidating it through her nose as she damned her circumstances.

She knew what that meant: Whoever had been taking over now, they had known the mistakes of the past or had been too well-versed to let the landlines of the Silph building be open. The only communication in or out this time, as opposed to the first time around, would've been on their terms.

These were professionals. Armed professionals. Not just with Pokémon she imagined, but with guns. Guns. Actual frickin' guns.

The woman who had started the armament of the police in Kanto was faced that irony: facing down criminals who had found their own to fight a movement she started.

Irony.

A Christmas god-damn Miracle.

She hadn't known when she had frozen up, aiming still at the elevators. Her mind was running faster than an Arcanine and she knew this isn't what she needed. She knew better than this. She wrote the book on modern gunfighting! On modern policing!

She wasn't Red, or Champion Lyra, or the Heroes of Hoenn and the Saviors of Sinnoh. She wasn't a hero, just a Ranger running from her past and it put here right there, three floors removed from a Rocket that was changed by the world.

She was a good woman with a gun that had nothing less than the innocent at stake. Perhaps more than that, she held the lives of her husband and the only being she had called, more or less, her son.

What they wanted, why they were here, what they had with them and how tonight would end, if she couldn't get help, then she had to have BEEN the help. If she ran she'd been leaving her loved ones behind, and if anything happened to them…

"Think! Think!" She spoke to herself, telling her right from wrong.

_No! No! I'm not being a god damn one-man army tonight! I have to get help!_

She needed help as the floor in front of her exploded in dry wall and flooring: the sounds of distant gunfire erupting before her as she flew back and placed herself against the creaky windows that had just been installed, hoping the torrent of gunfire did not wander anymore toward her.

* * *

The sound of gunfire was nothing new to Hops. The sound of gunfire at that measure, between that many people and that many guns, it was a new experience to him that spoke of recklessness. Gunfire had been shot up into the ceiling, making him and the rest of the hostages huddle together more in the depression of the room before the gardens, those who hadn't taken it screaming with hands around their ears. The younger Pokémon in particular, he felt for them as they huddled by their trainers, it must've hurt.

He had been a Grovyle by the time McCain had become a cop, and, if only because Kanto labor laws had advanced enough that Pokémon like him had been had been offered pay, he signed onto the department as an office assistant. He didn't think it particularly peculiar he had worked in a police office, or in some sort of authority place, all his life, but he had, and with that came the training. First it was cursory, inside the department's gym for a physical routine, and in truth that was the most he had done until Janie had been outed and they, together, began a life as Rangers.

It was there life had aged him more than time would.

He barked out in his most basic tongue: "Down! Down! Down!" The Pokémon who had been lucid enough listened as he shot out from Daniel's legs, pushing down those younger or unknowing enough to the floor for safety. Daniel had done the same. For as much as Hops hadn't liked him there had been one thing true with him: he had been a man of physicality. He was a trainer once, traveling the regions professionally. Perhaps the only man in that entire office, that entire hostage group that knew how to act under pressure truly.

The pressure so great that it had felt choking the moment the hostages had all been gathered on that floor's garden into a neat circle, and surrounded by gunmen. The gunmen and women, they dressed in the classic uniform, unmistakable: Grey boots, black pants and shirts with a distinctive red R over them, otherwise sporting tactical vests and gear, sporting balaclavas or masks. That was what they all shared save one. A man in white. A man in a suit so white, so bright that it seemed blinding in the dark room. By the man in white's side a totally covered Rocketeer had leaned against one of the rocky pillars of the room, unbothered as the man in white shuffled his blue hair to one side with an air of class and held a notepad in his hands.

Unclasping his hands from it, standing above the recessed portion of the room where the hostages gathered, the gesture was like magic almost, silencing the panicking of the crowds as he gained their attention.

Starting slow, and measured, half the people in that room knew the voice before he had gotten halfway through. Mr. Silph especially seized up, hidden in the crowd. Hops had freezed cold. "Again and again, our histories are intertwined, those of the Silph Corporation. This time however, we will break the cycle. Team Rocket will have its revenge." The man spread his arms outward as if accepting all of the hostages, but before he had done it, he went to his balaclava, tearing it off.

Those who had been senior enough in the company remembered his face very well:

A lightning blue haired individual; a phenomenally smart young man who was as much of a leader as he was a researcher in radio sciences. It was only he that could've reformed Team Rocket after Giovanni was imprisoned.

Archer Nostra.

The final Rocket executive. Released from prison on good behavior and being forthcoming on information, clearly, by anyone's regard there in the SIlph Tower that evening, a mistake.

One hand held his balaclava, another: a revolver drawn. At his feet the loyal Houndoom that, according to rumor, had been nothing less than Giovanni's own, gifted to his most trusted lieutenant.

"Ladies and gentlemen. If you may know me, then you know well enough that the Silph Corporation's legacy has culminated in my being here tonight, naturally. What we do will be inevitable." He started. All the pomp, all the power. Only the brute pragmatism of Giovanni himself had tempered it. "You will be witnesses."

The gunmen had all covered their anlges, surrounding the crowd as their Pokémon played their part: monsters, growling, snarling at all those who had dared break formation. The designer and cutesy Pokémon that belonged to the Silph executives could hardly match.

It was why so many of the Rocketeer's Pokémon had focused on Hops. He had stood out, so, so much. They could smell it on him. He felt his blades harden, only to feel the hand of Daniel on his head.

"Don't." He whispered.

Hops didn't. Something was wrong though. In all the commotion, in all of the chaos, there had been an itch at the back of his head as if a sine wave, wanting to pull his head back. It was a weight, but yet not, he felt free, but yet restrained. It was a feeling of… calm? He tried breathing through his nose, trying to find something within him that he had felt only in battle, in a fight, but, nothing. He had felt bad clenching a fist even.

Something was wrong. Very, **very** wrong as he felt his eyes bounce in and out of focus. The lesser willed Pokémon had already gone to their knees, and those who could stand did, but their shoulders or stances had dropped.

Hops had found it very hard to breath past a certain point, but it didn't feel like he was choking.

The Pokémon of the Rocketeers had all, in one motion, closed in on the hostage group like a vice. The hot breaths of the fire types among them had been infernal. A lone Charizard's steps making pumps that shook the entire building as its mouth steamed. Again, the terror started, the panicking as people tried to crush themselves tighter together to avoid being swallowed whole it seemed by them.

Closer and closer they went, Hops hopping onto Daniel's shoulders instinctively. Always, always his species preferred the height advantage.

Daniel's fists had formed as he had let people pass behind him. If only he had his team here, if only… A thought crossed by his mind. Was this what Red felt like when he came to Silph all those years ago? Was this what those kids in Sinnoh felt when they climbed Coronet to stop the end of the world?

A fire, it burned in him, to do something, to show them that he too was a trainer like that.

"Dear God someone help!" Someone had screamed as an Arbok slithered high above them, jaws open.

"Enough!" Mr. Silph's voice yelled out, stepping forward, out from that group of hostages. "Archer, what do you want?!"

A smirk was seen on Archer's mouth, his hand gesturing to two of his men. As soon as Silph had come out he had been taken away to one of the elevators, Archer moving behind them as he glanced at the relaxed Rocketeer. "Behave."

Was that an order for him? Or a recommendation for the hostages?

Hops didn't know. Not as the Pokémon of the Rocketeers backed off and the expectations of the day had been established.

One of the female Rocketeers had let down her mask to speak as she waved a gun at them all, similarly relaxing, sitting on one of the concierge tables. "Sit tight." She spoke loudly, taking a champagne flute and downing it, "Stay chill. Hell, go on your phones we don't give a shit. We've got electronic jamming from here up to the roof. You're not getting any service. So as long as you don't do anything, we're not doing anything."

Hostages. They were hostages.

* * *

**December 24th**

**7:52 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

She wanted to cry, holding her head, covering her eyes as she saw the row of bullets in front of her stop a foot away. It had been a very, very long time since this part of her brain had been up and going, so many neurons going off that she hadn't remembered having, twisting and turning every emotion her heart and mind could take until it settled like water over an ice cube tray. There was once a woman who had known what to do here, somehow, somewhat. A woman better prepared to take everything on today.

She had once been that woman. The world demanded that she be that woman.

It always did. For reasons beyond her, or reasons that she could never admit to. Today, tonight, for the rest of her life if she had made it out, she prayed that she'd do it for her own reasons. That was all she asked for as she prayed to every God, man or monster, that would listen.

Finding her center, finding her breath, she opened her eyes and found her footing.

There was a way to things. To fight tactically. Whoever those hostage takers had been, those Rocketeers, they were thinking that way too.

So that was why McCain had taken the two mags out of her back pocket and transferred to her front, active, checking the round in the chamber and sucking in her breath, gritting her teeth, steeling herself for what she needed to do.

A plan, a checklist had reappeared in her head like old religion, and she had once been its prophet. Nervously, she had stepped over those bullet holes, unable to see past. Looking back up the bullets still had gone further up, but the entry holes had been getting wider as the bullets lost velocity and punch.

What floor had she been on again? 88.

100 in total. Hostages on 83.

Everything above her had still be construction, much like this one. Below 83? God knows what. Danny had told her all the time about the changing floor plans, the almost insane composition of some of the projects that the departments had worked on that did take an entire floor to test.

She wasn't sure if she could make it the nearly 100 flight of stairs, or if it was practical. With having pissed her pants any Pokémon worth a damn would've been able to catch her scent, and if they controlled the elevators she had been trapped anyway.

So what was the remaining option?

Fight.

How did she fight them without endangering the hostages?

Was it possible?

If there was one thing possible in her life, she knew that everything could've gone right and something still could've gone wrong.

Gone wrong. Everything was already going wrong.

What was one more dead cop to that list?

Glancing around there was no cover here. If there was a dead cop to be added to it all, she only hoped she could add a few Rocketeers to that list as well. That wouldn't happen without good cover.

Her back hunched, her hand wrapped around the grip of her pistol so naturally. Feeling her belt, tightening it, her fingers graced over the metal shield that had been hers: the badge of the Celadon City Police Department.

Time to get tactical. Tactical as she could in an oversized Christmas sweater that had been really annoying her as it kept riding down her arms, interfering with her aim. With all her might she had pulled them up, rolling them over and over until she felt them tight.

Her feet already felt sore and pricked, barefoot as she was, not like she had a choice as she returned to the doors of the stairwell, beginning the long process of claiming home plate. All the floors had been laid out the same, but their contents had been differing.

Barefoot she didn't make much noise on the stairs, as she got to each floor and peered into the appropriate entrance afforded to her.

One of the first merits of tactical planning had always been establishing the field, and, if she could've done anything with no shoes and no shirt, it was that, running up and down the western stairwell, tracking floor numbers and knowing, exactly, what they were. It was by that measure she had taken a marker left on one of the drafter's tables and started writing along her arm the floors and their contents. If she had to run, it would've done her good to also know where she was running to and through.

87\. IT, servers. Glass and standing towers. Blinking computers like Christmas Trees.

86\. Ornate. Johto-inspired it felt in its regal red. A place you brought in partners to talk about multi-million dollar deals. Dioramas and mock ups of projects on tables as big as her kitchen back home. A boardroom.

85\. Cubicles. Accounting? Something like that, end to end the head high squares of an office life she couldn't begin to imagine living.

84\. "Wew." Those words had left her mouth before she had clamped them shut. First, she saw the room, set up like a display section in a museum. Glass stands housing little platforms holding up products and prototypes spoken only in tech magazines and sci-fi. Then she saw the backs of some of the Rocketeers peering out of the room's blacked out windows. Censors of course, prying eyes not able to look in, even at that height. She backed out before they noticed.

83\. She knew what was on 83. Everything.

It was unwise of her to even try and peer open the door, unwise for her to keep going down, so she stayed on 84, glancing at her styler in its shoulder holster. Taking it out again she had flipped to its diagnostics: that same error message read itself on its display.

ERR_NETWORK_RETRIEVAL | CANCELLED SIGNAL | CHECK/CHANGE SURROUNDINGS | ERR_NETWORK_RETRIEVAL

"Hastings you old fart, what the fuck does this mean?" She yelled at herself in hushed breaths, going through her device's manual in her head. Once a long time ago there was an exam on it in the Ranger School.

She passed, whatever that meant.

"Cancelled signal cancelled signal…" Electric Pokémon, they were liable to cause such back read frequencies that knocked out the Styler's comms. The solution was simple. She had flipped to the frequency equalizer, dialing the sinewave that dedicated itself to indicating what frequency the Styler was using the bounce transmissions out. If she could've matched it to the offending signal then-

The counter-frequency that was feeding into the styler had bounced, according to what the Styler could detect. McCain had been taken off guard, paused for a moment, eye brow raised. Before she even started to adjust, it bounced again, and then again, and then again. Randomly it felt like, but McCain had counted the seconds. And then again. And then again.

Five seconds, each time.

This hadn't been a natural process.

Artificial then. Man-made.

Radio cancelling. **Radio-!**

She wanted to scream, but the echoes would've killed her.

Rocketeers. Radio. Silph.

She remembered why she was here again: Rocket had come again, and the last time had been because of someone who had been out currently for good behavior.

* * *

**December 24th**

**7:55 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

The elevator ride up to 86 had been nostalgic. As if nothing had changed. Everything had changed though, right down to what was the position of power. Shoulder to shoulder Archer had stood by Mr. Silph, the pair flanked by three other Rocketeers.

"Just like old times, Joe?" Archer held his hands behind his back, slightly posturing over, head tilted at one of his old bosses. Mr. Silph had no such joviality and casualness to him as he frowned. That had only, barely, put a stamper on the younger man. "I remember, it was always you and Giovanni, side by side like this with me in the back. Always so… hierarchal."

Mr. Silph had no comment, no words as the elevator doors opened to the meeting room of the tower.

"What are you doing here, Archer?" Silph had ground out, uncaring that he had been flanked by men who seemed like they would kill, despite the fact they wore the clothing of the Rocketeers of the past.

Archer had ignored for the moment, seeing the elevator raise up to floors that hadn't been there since the first uprising. "Business been good, I take it? Trust me I would've rather hit Devon. They didn't seem to be hurting for cash."

The elevator had rung open. 86. Boardroom.

Archer strode out first, and, all things accounted for, it had been a good idea for Mr. Silph to follow. The old man did, followed at a distance by the gunmen.

Throughout the room leading up to the actual, enclosed meeting room had been dioramas of Silph industrial projects throughout the world. Out in Orre a sanctuary for Pokémon, state of the art, had been drafted up, it placed down in example on a scale model in that board room. It among others: bridges and refineries, research labs and more sky scrapers like this one, it had been around that floor, inspiring any who would come in here of further prosperity on behalf of Silph.

Archer had approached one such model: an oil rig meant for Hoenn, just outside of Sootopolis. Ever since Groudon and Kyogre had their sparring match there the geothermal activity beneath had been ripe for the taking. The diversification of Silph beyond purely Pokémon related matters had been a boon. "The goodwill generated after we left, it certainly propelled you further than you could've ever dreamed of, hasn't it? Oh my." Turning over to one of the walls, a picture of Mr. Silph shaking hands with-

"What is this all about, Archer? Is it revenge?"

It had been Red himself. Older than he was when he had come to Silph the first time, but for good reason: Silph had sponsored him, free of charge, for his further training on Mt. Silver. It still went on even today.

Archer shook his head briskly. He had been on the receiving end of battles against two such trainers in his life: Red the first time, and then Lyra the next. How he had ended up being a constant step into the rise of multiple trainers of their statue he had chalked up to simply bad luck.

Some of the escorting Pokémon had locked eyes with the photo, with Red, seeing something that only at the farthest reaches of Archer's ability to understand felt: Power, mastery.

"Oh Mr. Silph." Archer had reached out his hand to Mr. Silph, a shove from one of the gunmen forcing Mr. Silph into his reach. Archer had gently taken the man, guiding him into the meeting room, amidst models and pictures of success. "The nature of our visit here might be, on its face, particularly theatric… but I assure you. If there is any revenge here to be made, it is only something on the way to our true task."

Having said that he had opened the glass door into the meeting room, two people already sat. One had been masked, the other had been a dark man, a Rotom hovering over his shoulder typing away into a console that had been built into that thick wooden table.

"Lexor." Mr. Silph had been going through his company's history with who had been showing up.

Lexor Buchanan had been Silph's researcher in regards to the Rotom and its ability to interface with common appliances, seeing how hard that connection could go in practice and for what benefit. Apparently, as Silph remembered, using his Rotom for corporate espionage hadn't been one of those approved uses.

Lex had only given a cheeky, wide smile, same as his Rotom as the other masked man, Silver, sat in a chair, head down.

Mr. Silph's eyes had lain on him until he was still forced forward, right next to Lex.

"I never got that letter of recommendation, Mr. Silph." Lex had twirled a pen around his fingers as he leaned back, Archer comfortably taking a chair and sitting in.

"You're lucky we didn't call the cops on you, Mr. Buchanan." Silph bit back, but he was in hostile company. "All of you, stepping up your, your," he looked at the guns, "Methods! Like this it won't end well!"

"Oh trust me, Mr. Silph." Archer had said all so casually again, "As far as our methods are concerned, this is the cleanest option."

Lex had turned over the monitor of the console to Mr. Silph. "If you may, your passcode."

The console had displayed a rather plain UI, displaying a number of steps and inputs meant to be pressed into by computer.

DAILY CYPHER: ?

PASSWORD CLEARANCE 1 OF 7: ?

"You came in here to access our computer network? Not our inventions?" Mr. Silph seemed stunned. The last time, it was so simple. Giovanni thought he could strong arm his way into getting everything the Silph Co had offered in way of its technology. Prototypes and diagrams all caches around the building physically. They would've gotten away with it too had it not been for Red and the police forming a blockade around the town outright.

Archer shook his head. "All we ask of you, Joe, are simple fill in the black questions for this."

"Well I don't have the answer," Silph had said simply, not out of courage or fear, but just pure bewilderment. "You know I haven't been CEO for a few years and simply remain a member of the board. The CEO and the rest of the board have to generate a new key by biotrace authorization! You won't be able to hijack any information we store on our servers, our correspondence! It's not like we have allowed someone in Giovanni's place to strongarm our competi-"

"Sit. Down. Joe." Archer had said with a little more punch, dismissive almost as those men and Pokémon who had come in with them had gazed around. What had spoken instead had been the revolver Archer held, placed gently down on the table as he propped one elbow on it. The silver gunmetal contrasting with the dark word so cleanly, it burned to look at.

A drop of sweat came down from Mr. Silph's white hair, going over the bumps of his craggly forehead.

"We came here tonight expecting that you had some form of power over this company still. That you were just more than a name." Archer had started, looking over still at the monuments to Silph's successes without Rocket. "Surely you must have something to offer us to help us access this network."

"Us? What us?" Silph had shaken his head, having sat down, arms up at Archer and then all around. "Team Rocket is gone. You already tried to reform it once and that failed, what makes you think this version will be any better, especially like this?"

Archer had chuckled. "Oh Mr. Silph… Who said we were Team Rocket?"

* * *

McCain had returned to 86, checking it again, having trailed the rumble of the elevator through the staircase. Sure enough there had been people, she thinking to check the positioning of whoever had come out of it. Of all things however she didn't expect to see Mr. Silph himself carted out, pressed forward by a-

She didn't see through her gap of doorway, the entire group of Rocketeers and Pokémon funneling into the more private meeting room in the center.

One of the advantages of bare feet had meant her step imprint had been near zero, audibly, especially on hard tile. So he had ducked in, going along the model tables, getting closer, closer to the meeting room until all she could do was get on her stomach beneath the closest display. At the angle, through her angle, she saw Mr. Silph sat down on the table through the clear door, but as she had leaned over right, all her fears had been proven right:

Archer Nostra. Still in a white suit, still a greasy rodent in the flesh of a posh yuppie. At his feet a Houndoom had been curled up.

Good behavior, McCain scorned the judiciary of Johto for it. The man knew good behavior. He knew it very well; that's why it was nothing but a veil for the very bad behavior he had carried out.

"Team Rocket is dead." McCain heard Archer

say to Mr. Silph. "But their signage, their skin, is awfully useful for eliciting a… response."

"You don't care about Rocket anymore?" Silph's eyes went wide.

Archer smiled. "I'm a reformed criminal, fortunately." He waved his revolver around at the men with him, they hardly caring as they stood there, guns in hand, professional as they could be "They can call us whatever they want, and in fact, it'll be better if they think we're Rocket. All I know is, our goals are about money now, Mr. Silph, not monsters."

"Money?" Silph was confused still, even as all the masked gunmen and women nodded in the affirmative. "How? You know we didn't keep cash in this building even when you-"

"The private vault on floor 80." Archer had interrupted him. "A few days ago me and my people tried to hunt down Giovanni and Blaine's great experiment, one that you directly funded privately. Don't act like no one else knew."

Mr. Silph's eyes sunk back in his head. It had been years since he had remembered his place in history, albeit hidden. Giovanni never ratted him out even, in the end, for when he had come and asked for funds to create the ultimate Pokémon with Silph's help, who was he to not be intrigued by the prospect? "**Mewtwo**."

"Hm. Correct. We had to kill a man in order to even have a shot of taking it. Regrettably we failed."

Even through blurred sound behind glass McCain could make that out, biting her own tongue. So much for detective work. She had her criminals, right and center: whoever had been here right now. It was these people, clad in the uniforms of Rocket grunts, faces hidden, guns drawn, Pokémon out and ready to hurt, to kill. Whoever had directly shot Parker, it didn't matter, they were all complicit.

How easy it was to know, but how hard it would be to do something about it, especially if they had gone this far already.

Archer himself. She was glad she was on the floor, or else she would've felt her knees go weak at the very idea of being involved with Rocket again, especially like this, her own gun in her hand and ready to do what was necessary to save not only her life, but the lives of those she loved.

This was personal this time, and it had opened up another aspect of feeling, of tension, that ate away at McCain's brain like acid as she listened intently.

"And what do you want from the vault that could possible help you with that, with money?"

Archer had grabbed the grip of his gun softly, feeling its contours for a moment, concentrating on it before answering. "For a year we had been producing Master Balls at Sevii, paid off a few managers for us to wheel out the recovered machinery. You must know how difficult production of them were under even legal pretenses, so it took a long time to develop the batch we had. Mewtwo destroyed them in a moment of… weakness." Archer held on that last word. That moment of weakness was not shooting Parker when he had the chance, letting him scream out and warn Mewtwo and all the inhabitants of Cerulean Cave. "We know, in the vault, among other treasurers," Archer glanced at Silver, still masked, "There is a sizable batch of Master Balls in there for the sake of artificial scarcity. With that, and the knowledge of how Mewtwo would protect its wards, we think we can do it right this time. And once caught, well, let's just say we have some buyers on the Global Trade System who would be more than willing to pay the highest bid for the original Mewtwo."

Silph narrowed his eyes angrily at him, taking it all in. "At least Giovanni knew what class of criminal he was, Mr. Nostra. You don't seem to realize you're nothing more than a petty thief."

Archer's lips turned upward. A pout by any other name, returning the glare. "Will you not give me anything, Joe?"

"It won't matter if I did have anything to give you Archer. You'll need the codes and biometrics from the rest of the admin."

"_Just give him the codes_." A voice rang out from behind a mask. One that Mr. Silph knew very, very well. He had raised a young man with that voice a long time ago. Just as Giovanni and Arianna had courted favors of him, so too did he ask them his own. He never had a son, and the man known as Silver had been the closest one to it. **"Please."**

Archer acknowledged him with a nod, looking over his shoulder.

"**Silver**," Mr. Silph had said his name like a Kalosian tragedy, looking behind that mask and seeing a boy he had helped raise, both before and after the first Rocket uprising. How many weeks, months had he personally despaired after Silver ran away from Saffron to start his own journey, to find his own place? How happy had he been when, after it all, he had learned that he had become a fierce Pokémon Trainer, and tempered by no one else but Lyra herself in a loving relationship? He despaired again now, seeing the son of Giovanni come again into this trade. "I have nothing to give them. _Why are you here, son_? I can help you. You know that. I love you."

That was killed him.

"Fair enough." Archer turned back to Mr. Silph before Silver could give an answer to a surrogate father. "If you think I'm a petty thief, then, well, I guess I'll be a killer by the time we're out of here."

The look on his face with a gun raised and pointed at him, it was gone when the hammer was pulled back, and the hair trigger pressed.

.44 Magnum. Some said the most powerful handgun cartridge in the world. It shook all the glass of that meeting room, created a fireball the size of a Voltorb and, more gruesomely, painted the paned door red with red and chunks of brain as it put a hole the size of a dinner plate through Mr. Silph's forehead. His head was cracked back, the momentum, eyes rolling back, sending him and the chair to the floor.

McCain beneath the table outside nearly bit her tongue off, her very teeth hurting as she saw, for the first time in a long time, what a man shot in the head looked like. The dead look settled on her by pure morbid coincidence as it rolled over, as if looking at her beneath the table.

"We accounted for this." Archer spoke with barely a pause. To McCain, between pure shock and the muted rumble from behind the glass, she was frozen as Mr. Silph's gore slid down it. Standing up unbothered Archer pointed to the two men who bore witness, one taking the shot worse than him. "Blue, dispose of the body. Silver-"

Archer looked at Silver, eyes wide, some of the splatter on his face that he desperately tried to wipe off silently. He had almost forgotten who this man was to the boy, a long time ago. "Silver." he said again, and the young man in question panted, a breath he was holding let go, dry heaving. "Silver." Archer spoke again, this time for the last time.

"Wh- what?"

The two men shared a silent look with different meanings.

Elsewhere, Janie McCain had sunk back into cold reality and rolled out from under the table outside the meeting room, her leg bumping into it momentarily.

The sound had perked every single person in the meeting room up, the Houndoom having taken its feet and blasting out the glass door as everyone else followed, guns up.

McCain had made it to a bathroom before anyone had gotten out, locking the door behind her as she ducked into one of its stalls, gun at her chest as she shrank into a corner.

She felt the pounding at the door, locked, each impact making her grip the wooden panels of her pistol harder as she held her breath. Throughout the floor tables were being overturned and other doors being banged on, but they all phased out when compared to the one she hid behind.

After a while that pounding stopped, futile.

The man who had been pounding on the door had reported back to Archer as they stood in the middle of the boardroom, shoulders shrugged. "It was nothing."

The Houndoom hadn't been as convinced, but there was no used getting spooked at everything that went bump that night.

Archer steeled his face, ejecting the one spent round from his revolver and replacing it. "Lex?"

"Hm?" He and his Rotom perked up behind him, he had no gun, no weapon.

"Now you can crack the code to the vault, can you?"

Again a Cheshire grin. "The foundations of all of Silph's code was built by me, Archer. Change it, harden it, whatever they did, it was all based on my work."

Archer didn't turn as he simply waved him off toward the elevator, and he went, turning now to Silver has he stepped over Mr. Silph's body and blood, unsuccessfully, his boots dipping in it momentarily as what skin was visible behind his mask had been pale.

"I'm a man of my word, Silver." Silver had been almost spooked by the man who had become a killer, he snapping up to catch his eyes. "Until you are needed, you are free to scour what you can of the network and Silph's inventory for what you and your Feraligatr **need.**"

Breathlessly he had taken off his mask, sick of it, nodding at the former Rocket executive. At least there was no pretense of Rocket anymore here but a façade. That they could both agree on. At least he hadn't pulled the trigger on the old man. That's what he told himself as he found his breath coming out in pants, catching himself.

"Right." He answered finally, recovering from seeing someone die like that, and how the remains had still just been right behind him. A body, that had been once full of life, had lived a life, now empty and devoid of it.

"But we may need you for further tasks, and especially for our exit. So do as you will."

Archer had turned to leave with his gunmen, but a voice had sputtered out at him, almost like accusation. "You didn't bring me here just to watch _him _die." Oh, what the years, and Johto's current champion, did to temper Giovanni's son. It was adorable. Two sides of him clashing in turmoil and angst.

"I'm not your father, Silver."

* * *

**December 24th**

**8:05 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

She had retreated back to 88 as soon as everyone had left 86, running, not caring how much noise she made as she realized the elevator had been going the opposite direction as her. Bursting out onto the constructing floor again she had let all the malcontent in her throat out.

"Janie why didn't you do anything!" She had yelled at herself, chastised, as she had broken back onto 88, pacing in manic circles, head going every which way as if looking for an answer until her hands gripped it steady, the feel of her HiPower's metal and wood against her temple calming her. "Because you'd be dead too you dumb bitch!"

She'd never seen someone die like that: by execution, and it rocked her to her core as she felt the heat of her entire being drain into the cold. What had been serious then had been nothing now, replaced by a seriousity that did not let up, more and more bodies piling up.

First Parker, now Mr. Silph. How many more?

She would know best. Each kill after the first had been so much easier.

Everything had been so simple now about Parker's death, the case before her laid out, all neat and clean. Though everything about how she started that day, everything about what would happen tomorrow, it was pressed out of her head as she concentrated on NOW.

But it was hard to think, not when there were Pokémon too she had to deal with. She saw, at least, a Houndoom, and without Hops to help square them off…

She just trembled to think of that fire, being shot at her…

Fire?

Buildings that large the fire systems were often linked directly to-!

She had run at the first fire lever she had seen, arms out, thinking herself a genius.

* * *

Of all the renovations done to Silph Tower, it had made floor 80 a particular exception to it all. Floor 80, in the old plan for the building, had once been its top floor, above even the old CEO office of 79. At 80, like a treasure at the bottom of a dungeon, Silph's secrets had been held and kept, and the same treasures that had been there when Archer had been an intern and Silver a child, they had probably still remained. No one knew what, exactly, had been in there on top of the Master Balls, but anything extra was a bonus.

"7 passwords and a daily cypher." Lex had gone on as they emerged on floor 80. Barren save for a cylindrical room in the center, set in steel, on the far end a metal door that, after a swipe of a keycard taken from Mr. Silph's body, opened to an inner sanctum and an inner steel door, thick with steel. "Steelix-shed armor, multiple redundancies tied to a locked security OS that is tied directly to the national power grid… the vault itself is worth about as much as Orre's GDP." Lex described it as Archer and Silver were brought before the inner door, imposing. Not unlike the steel door in the basement.

Archer had been enthralled by it, standing where Arianna did, all those years ago. Was there irony in it? Perhaps. What had she been looking for beyond these doors the first time around?

"Hm?" Archer had regarded Lex again, not having caught a detail he just spouted out.

"I can get through one through six, and the cypher. Give me two hours, at minimum for the mechanicals and software. No more than five max. But for 7?" His Rotom leaped at the whole thing, unable to get into it, meld into it as it had been so used to, it backing away with an electrical snap and pout. "That's tied Saffron's electrical grid. It's an electric magnetic locking mechanism maintained by a constant connection. I can't even break that without taking down the entire building."

Archer had only smiled at the doubt. "Oh trust me. I've read the police reports, the preparations they made for us after Giovanni's failure and then my own. Their new preparation will be our key."

Their radios cackled, and Archer had picked it up. "Go ahead."

It was the doorman, from his computer at the front desk he had seen something. "Fire on 88."

Archer had looked to Lex concerned before speaking back into the radio. "Fire?"

"Alarm was pulled and its going straight toward Saffron's fire department."

He didn't make that far in his legal life, or make it through prison, without being quick thinking. "Get the name of the guard, call 911, and report the building. Say it's a malfunction." he ordered through the radio.

"Someone's loose?" Silver turned over after walking right up against the door, knocking his knuckles against it, not a reverb even heard. It was that deep, that reinforced.

"On 88 apparently," Archer grimaced, pausing the radio. "It's alright, probably someone who slipped from the party."

"It only ever takes one." Silver mused, memories coming back of Goldenrod.

"In your case, two, remember." Silver had chided, going to the radio. "Lillie. Go check it out."

"Lillie" had been a particularly interesting part of the crew. Of the people Archer found, he had come in a pack. His brother had also been on it. Where he had found these men and women had ranged far and wide, locationally, but they all had something in common. Like him, they were all left-behinds. Men and women who had wanted to change when their original occupations, their original allegiances, were lost or intractable. Two brothers who had hailed from Unova, who once believed in King N's goal of Pokémon liberation. They had been kicked out shortly before Plasma's final move for wanting a revolution of blood.

They served Archer better.

Team Magma, Aqua, Snagem and Cipher, Galactic and Flare and Skull had made their alums known here. He had even approached Archie himself to join, but the man had reformed, living a quiet life as a fisherman in Lilycove. What had ended up of his contemporaries and peers, of the trainers that had come to fight them, and the world that rose up to kill them, it had changed them too. To think of violence as the answer to what they did? Criminal empires and organizations brought down beneath boots and a hail of gunfire by cops who had had enough? What had changed?

Some of those leaders were in jail, some had been under house arrest, some had actually been reformed and been living lives making up for their misdeeds, while others, like N, had disappeared entirely.

The Unovan Champion hunted for him still, all those years later.

When Archer had talked to him, even he didn't have the heart to ask him to assist in his plan.

What he had said to the hostages though, it was true: Everything, in some fashion, had been leading up to this.

* * *

The highs and lows of her emotions that day had breached her own sense of self. The joy of seeing the lights of firetrucks move toward her down the streets, only for those lights to shut off and those trucks move away, they had tested her sanity.

"God dammit!" She banged on the window with the heel of her gun, leaving a mark. "Nothing's ever easy, is it?"

The world answered her as she heard the elevator ping behind her, and she had dived for cover behind wooden pallets.

"Don't let the uniforms fool you, whoever you are." The voice that came at her was masculine, taunting. "We're not like the Rocketeers that came years ago. We're dangerous. We're smart. We called off the fire trucks. No one's coming to help you."

What changed?

Why was she here? With a gun? Hiding behind palettes as a man with an assault rifle scanned the room for whoever pulled that alarm?

She knew as well as any person. **She was the reason.**

The secret seminars and conferences, the almost overnight distribution of firearms and gear from the old, long forgotten military depots… She had been the first soldier in a militarization of a police that sought to fight monsters and men. First it was Kanto, when the police were woefully underequipped to take on Team Rocket in the very building she stood in and the day was saved by a trainer. The answer then had been her; giving a new policeman a gun and seeing what it did. What she did had been successful beyond belief: clearing out the underground hideout beneath Celadon City only by herself and an old shotgun. When Johto came, and Goldenrod was raided by Rocket, more and more people like her were called up in preparation for a third Team Rocket uprising that didn't come (until now). When Hoenn came, Gods themselves fought, and the police had asked for heavier gear, more guns, more people, and the justification to do it. The Unovans had been perhaps the most drastic step, when Team Plasma held the Elite Four hostage there Unova had mobilized everything up to a military with its police force, waging a day long war against Team Plasma that scarred the region to that day.

Time and time again, with each and every indiscretion, world ending consequences pushed by people like Archer, like Cyrus, like Giovanni, it justified everything she had set in motion as the progenitor.

How many talks had she given at new police conferences? Arguing for firearms for even the smallest, most peaceful department? Pushing asides the volunteer forces like the Jenny family and replacing them with armed professionals who had wanted nothing but have a gun and a badge? Too many things cascaded from it, too many prejudices.

How many young ethnic teens had been shot because of trigger happy cops with too many racial prejudices? Accidental deaths from irresponsible police who hadn't the measure she had? How many people had been killed because of something that had been designed to keep them safe from the people who were said to do them harm?

"If you come out," the voice and its body walked into the room. "I will not harm you."

_"Show me your hands! Show me your hands! Get on the floor! Don't move!" _This was what it felt like she imagined, being yelled at by her as a gun was pointed at someone's face, scared and unable to process what was happening.

It was only natural that the people they were brought up to fight finally matched what was being dished to them. And by the time that happened, enough damage, enough backlash had happened that had made what happened to her inevitable. Just as she had ushered in an age of a police of force, she was blamed for it, exiled.

It was right she was here, now facing what she did.

There now existed a world-wide network of young people whose evil teams had failed them; teams which had become the only unity they had ever known, and now they had sought to punish society for what was done to them by applying the same tactics applied. The cheek had turned. People who sought redemption, with nothing to live for.

Whoever these people were they did not fear her.

McCain had quietly made her way across the room, out of sight of the man that had come looking, going over to an even more incomplete portion of the room with power tools available.

She had jerked when she heard the rattle of gunfire.

Pre-firing, the man turning a corner that he had guessed she was behind.

She sucked in her breath: this was the score. Me or him.

She chose him.

Lillie been annoyed he had wasted some ammo as he turned around a few boxes, finding nothing, proving his prior statement a lie. He had no moment to dwell on it as he heard the whirr of a power tool off to the other side of the building.

Dashing over he had passed through frames of walls that had yet to be put up, toppling over a few paint buckets and toolboxes. The lights above that of an office stock, unkind, beating back the black of the sky let in by the windows.

The source of the power tool noise had been evident as he approached it, gun at his hip:

A power saw table.

Why would it go off without-?

The cold steel of a barrel was pressed against his neck as he saw the wall in his peripheral and a figure whip out from it.

Janie McCain had pressed the gun into his spine as she ran up to his back, only to step backwards. Her threat might've not made much imprint if he didn't know there was a gun aimed at them. "Drop your gun, hands behind your back."

The Rocketeer had frozen, temporary shock. "Who-?"

"Police!" Was all the words that came out of her mouth, identifying herself. It'd been years since she called herself that, but here simple was smooth and was what she needed; it fell out of her mouth like ice. "Drop your gun god dammit!" Through her teeth she tried not to yell, just in case there was a second man in there.

The Rocketeer held onto his gun awkwardly, at his hip, fingers white knuckled holding the grip and its forepiece as if his life depended on it. She looked down on it; it was some serious firepower for her.

"You won't do anything." The man drawled out behind his balaclava, slowly, tilting his head ever more at her to crane a look at who spoke to him.

"Please, don't try me." How long had it been since she last shot someone? Last killed someone in the line of duty? Especially not like this, her gun aimed at their back and at this distance. If she were anyone else this would look like an execution. She wasn't about to meet an execution with another execution. She wasn't that low.

"You're a cop. You have your rules." He justified.

Rules made because of her, in both directions. From pioneering the field of armed policework, to creating the effects that seemed oh so obvious to see. Irony. Irony floated in the air that was as thick as the Christmas Spirit outside and throughout Saffron.

It was a nerve that he struck. "Don't talk to me about rules, punk. I'm the one who wrote them!"

The strike that came to her was one that came because the Rocketeer followed her lead, dropping his gun, holding the strap it was held on as he whipped around, the firearm slung into her side. She didn't see it coming: the metal and wood slamming into her left arm as she charged the man, taking the hit as she used her momentum to force him to the ground.

Distantly the sound of her own pistol flying out of reach was but a footnote to everything else.

One of the integral rules of hand to hand: never get caught on the ground. The Rocketeer had hit the ground on his shoulder as McCain found herself on him, the spit in her mouth let loose unwittingly onto the side of his face as she reeled back her hand for a punch. He turned over though, throwing her off as he stumbled to a crouch, trying to get his gun back from the sling it hung from loosely. McCain skid on her back, the sweater not meant for this rough housing on concrete, for her to roll toward the man and taking the wooden foregrip of the gun and yanking. Anything to make sure he didn't get to the trigger.

McCain had seen the sweat on his brow, not expecting the fight, the determination he put in the pull. He was a bigger man than her, stronger, so he had inadvertently pulled her up.

With that momentum she had only thrust herself back down, gun in her stomach, legs pulled out as they found his midsection and carried him over her. It was a toss, a throw by any other measure, his body landing with a thump against some of the metal railing, framing the walls that would be. The gun had gone with him, and she had wished for her own. A glance to the windows and she saw it. No way she could dive for it in time.

She dived for the closest one.

The wind was kicked out of the Rocketeer as his skull bounced, but he had his priorities as he growled in his throat, clawing at the machine gun as again the tug of war started. McCain had gotten to it first, the positions now reversed, but with the way the sling had been on him she wouldn't be able to yank it off or to get to the trigger.

This was the next best thing: She yanked, digging in her bare heels painfully, jerking the man on the floor as she dragged him toward more things she could throw him into.

"Come on you _fucking _son of a bitch!" She had grit through her teeth and he had responded, tugging the gun back as she fought to keep it. If she had her boots she would've already stomped his head through the floor, but no such luck.

The Rocketeer twirled over, the sling going taut like a Feraligatr in a kill spin and McCain was on the floor again, slamming hard as the work benches and tools around them vibrated and jumped with the impact.

Her hands had been burned by the cloth sling as the Rocketeer pulled again, and yet she still held on, going onto her knees and throwing herself back as the Rocketeer palmed up, barely missing the trigger to shoot.

Throwing herself back McCain felt the knock of a thick table against her head. The jolt of pain oddly adding clarity to her as she fell on her back, looking up, seeing the underside of a table saw and the wood around her, left for the night. With one hand she had taken one of the cut end pieces of wood, only to throw it at the Rocketeer as he got his bearings and strength, standing up, sling held, putting his strength one last time into-

McCain had slid herself back again ending up on the other side of the saw, raising herself up and rotating the sling over just enough to line it up just as the Rocketeer found the grip of the gun, straightening out his trigger finger.

McCain pulled first.

The trigger on the saw was pulled, the tool brought forward on the table, cloth catching on as the gun's sling was torn through. In one fell swoop, a luck of the draw, the portion that was held more tightly to the man's gun went slack on his end, allowing McCain to pull it toward her as she kicked the circular saw's table down between them.

The Rocketeer stumbled back, but as he did his left hand pulled up his shirt: another black object seen at his waistband, pulled out, halfway aimed toward her as-

Typewriter. That's what these nearly century old submachine guns were called. The history of firearms in that world was defined in revolutions by inventors and engineers who, from time to time, found these weapons stagnated in development and brought them new and "modern" again. Warfare was rare, rarer still in those last few decades of world peace, and so the firearm needed not to necessarily be developed. There was nothing peaceful about McCain whipping the gun into her shoulder, aiming down the sights, and depressing the trigger into the rhythm that gave these guns their name.

The muzzleflash made up for any lack of Christmas lighting, in thunderous pops at a time as McCain defeaned herself, the fleshy sounds of skin and bone being broken and torn into heard that stopped only with the hard thud of a body on concrete. Completely and utterly, not even the sound of him bleeding out, choking on perforated lungs, McCain had pumped the Rocketeer full of lead. The black cloth of his uniform leaked red, soaking and eventually pooling beneath the man as his body lay on his back, staring up, his face sporting two new holes from the muzzle rise of recoil before McCain had taken control of the meaty submachine gun.

Its bolt was held open, the last round in its mag shot, barrel smoking hot from its tip as McCain's cheek was held to the wood stock, hoping he was dead and nothing less.

The echoes of gunfire rescinded, and for the first time in years she had killed a man.

Her breath through her nose had almost been as rapid as the gunfire, unblinking as she finally lowered the gun and seeing what she had just done truly, not through the ironsights but rather through her own eyes.

She had to remember, then and there, the first time she killed someone with a gun. She had to remember that long ago, she made her peace with that decision. This was no time to get thrown into those thoughts again.

Sucking in one final hot breath her gaze tore itself from the man's body, remembering where her own gun was thrown and running to it, the submachine gun in her left hand now and seemingly glued to it. Tossed askew, the finish on her pistol had a few more scratches, a ding, but nothing that would've impeded operation. It had been almost tossed through a window, and she had been thankful it hadn't been hitting the wall below it instead, but because of that standing up after picking it back, she had to look at herself. She didn't expect to see what had been made of her tonight:

She was a mess. Her dumb sweater had been forcibly clamped down around her chest and arms by her shoulder holsters, tucked into her jeans down her stomach and her arms rolled up until they became donuts essentially, thick around her biceps. Her hair had been down her shoulders, bangs in front of her eyes as only then she felt the wetness dripping from them. No one, that close, could pump a man full of .45 and expect not to get splatter. Looking down the reds of Christmas on the sweater's design had been beat back by the darker red of blood. She felt the looseness of some of the stitching already coming loose on the back.

Then she felt the wetness along her legs and for a moment she had feared that it was over: adrenaline was the only thing keeping her standing because the Rocketeer had got a shot off and she was hit in the leg.

The rush of the fight, the choking feeling of the kill, had disguised the moment her bladder opened and she pissed herself.

Nothing lasted forever. Not her life, or the ones downstairs below her, taken hostage or doing the hostage taking. Especially not the man, spread like a snow angel in death, that collapsed on the floor by construction equipment. What especially didn't last forever was the cruel lie that she told herself: The Rangers took her in after her stint as a cop, not because of her inherent tenacity or skill, nor her drive to become better than what had been made of her, some arbitrary soul searching, but rather because when push came to shove, they wanted someone to teach them how to shoot instead.

They needed someone who not only walked over the line, but drew it.

This time though, tonight, it had to have been for herself. Too much for her was at stake.

A weight so heavy that it made the eleven-pound gun she had taken from a dead man disappear along with the wetness that ruined her pants and pushed all thoughts that hadn't to do with action asides.

Dropping the empty mag of the gun outside the window instead, sending it down and away, she hurried back to the dead man, blood still pooling out as his eyes glazed over. The cop in her told her to secure the scene. The woman trying to survive that night and do something about the situation told her to bolt and run away before someone checked up on him. She did the in between, holstering her pistol as she reached and patted the man down. Pockets had been empty, no ID, no wallets. The backpack he had was drenched and shot through as she turned him over clumsily and ripped his pack into her own hands.

His uniform had been exactly a Rocketeer's. Had there been that many stock left over?

Zipping it open she found what she was looking for chiefly: there had been no distinctive bulge in his pockets, so the man had obviously not been anticipating a fight at that very moment. At least, not one that required more than one mag.

The rest of his ammo for the submachine gun had lain in it, she ripping the four thirty round magazines out and onto the ground. Three usable. One had taken a bullet from her as it blasted through his body. She had never used the weapon in her hands now before until that very moment, looking over both its blocky sides and seeing the usual. Bolt, safety switch, mag release and bolt release. It was a heavy gun that used heavy pistol ammo, and she fed it, slamming a mag into the feed ramp and sending the bolt home. An unloaded gun did her no good.

Her feet had felt warm, and, looking down, she damned the fact she didn't have shoes again, blood finally making its way to her feet as she searched the man's backpack.

Swearing once, she moved off, doing her best, scraping the edge of her feet on the ground and getting the worst of it off.

One cursory look at the man's feet and she could tell he had been too big for her, she was still better off barefoot.

The lighting was great in that room, even before their impromptu brawl, knocking some light fixtures off entirely. The drafter's table remained standing, she going over to it and emptying the contents of the bag onto its surface, slinging on her new gun in the same move, tying off the cut off end at the sling point. She was at the ready now, on all cylinders, glancing every other second at either the stairwells or the elevators.

Still what had been spilled was worth her attention.

"Comms." She spoke to herself, holding up a ham radio. Frequency locked according to its display, probably to whatever frequency that this group of Rocketeers was using. She looked for the markers that had been on the desk, finding a black one and taking the cap into her mouth, point to her left wrist:

_BAD GUY FREQ: 151.87_

She wrote it down on her skin, liable to forget it without. She had plans for the radio, at least, if she couldn't get her Styler to work. If nothing else she could at least listen in if they used it. The bag had a side-basket for a water bottle, the radio going there as she went back to the rest of its contents: Not much.

A few chemlights, probably for lighting in the darker rooms. Lint, dust, a multitool, that was useful at least. The backpack was small, probably nothing more than the man's mag bag, and it had been nothing that McCain herself could carry in her increasingly crowded pockets. If she were to take it she'd have to deal it dripping with his blood everywhere, and she was already sick of the substance.

It was worth checking one last time for Pokéballs. She doubted, if they were loyal, she was going to have an easy time subduing them with her styler in such a small space, but if they had been loyal and caring enough to this man if he had been a trainer, they might've popped out on their own accord.

One last shake and two candy bar-sized items came tumbling out, caught probably on its insides. Not another weapon, nor grenades, nor anything probably useful. Just two actual candy bars. No Pokéballs.

Her stomach grumbled and she had damned the person she had been that morning, at Cerulean Cave, for not shoving her damn face with donuts or, at her own family's diner not further stuffing herself. One immediately flew into her mouth and down her gullet before she could read the branding, the other kept in her last remaining back pocket as she desperately tried to take in calories and any sort of stimulant from it, the taste dead to her. When fighting for one's life the brain tended to prioritize some senses and dull everything else. That night she had to remind herself, at least for own mind, it got rid of taste.

Discarding the bag, again out the window, she tossed it as far as she could. She hoped it would've gotten some lonely pedestrian's attention. Hopefully a citizen of Saffron walking the city on Christmas night (unlikely) would be a good Samaritan and report. The problem was the bag didn't get further from the plaza.

Again, peering out the window, shouting would do her no good, that far out.

"Of all the buildings I gotta get stuck in why it gotta be the tallest frickin' one in all of Kanto."

She spoke, if anyone, to the dead man, only reminding her that she had a body to deal with.

The remaining magazines for the Typewriter went into her front pockets as she walked back over to him. Certainly, its presence meant that these weapons were probably dug up in some forgotten government warehouse where surplus went to rot, but she could pay no mind to that now. All she knew was that she had it now, taken from this man's cold dead hands.

The radio hadn't gone off as she expected, the minutes following the fight yielding nothing but silence as she calmed her nerves again. If no one was going to check up on them now it probably meant nothing was heard, hopefully, but the more time she spent there, the more likely that someone was going to check for whoever this was.

Whoever this was…

She avoided the blood pool by throwing a sheet of cut plywood by him, stepping on it as she leaned down again, grabbing the fabric of his balaclava and tearing up, catching pieces of flesh and skull with him. Thankfully entry wounds were less grisly than exit, and she avoided looking at the wet black fabric as she tossed it asides.

Forty-something male, probably in the latter half, white, almost blonde hair, fuck ugly not by birth, she observed, but rather the beatings and roughhousing he seemed to sustained based on scars and bruising. The Rocketeers of Giovanni's original gang were younger men and women, and, if it had been this long, this man seemed to have been the oldest. For as much of the roster of Team Rocket that was uncovered following their first and second uprising, there were still blanks in it. Still, the oldest Rocketeer was no more than this man's age, and he was accounted for in Hoenn in rehab.

His eyes were glossy, blue, but deft of life for obvious reasons. Palming them closed, she had hoped this man lived a good life, but chances are he hadn't.

Still, if anything, he had proven useful to her past almost killing her.

He had given her enough by virtue of scavenging, and the last thing that she could make use of was his body.

McCain could carry him with some difficulty, but she figured it was worth the attempt.

There was a rolling chair among a set she remembered seeing as she took stock of the room, obviously waiting to be used when that floor came together, but tonight she had figured this was as good of a send off as he was going to get, looking at his plain grey sweater. It might've been wrong, but she had been amused by her own thoughts at that moment, remembering that there was a red marker back at the drafter's table.

* * *

Archer had been back down at the hostages, plucking away at a sandwich left by the food table. Admittedly he hadn't eaten today so he had taken to a roast beef slider. It was nice to know Silph still used the same caterer.

Relaxed, he had sat on the table, propped in front of the group of hostages, Pokémon and Human alike still partly trembling.

Below Lex had been working away at the vault, his first, nominal successes reported as a cypher had been generated. Silver on the other hand had taken liberty of going through the available records across multiple floors, trying to find some deus ex machina to a problem, tragic in its own right.

Silver stood in front of those vault doors until Archer had enough of his sulking. _"Silver, it's Christmas. You've gotta believe in miracles."_

As Archer spoke to the hostages when he returned to them many had started wishing all their stars for theirs.

"I wanted to be professional, adult, cooperative with Mr. Silph." He started, biting into his meal. "After all we had a work history that built the very foundations of this company. I see some of you who were there when that period happened." Those in question had hunched down, avoiding Archer's sight. "But unfortunately, old man Joe didn't see it that way, so he won't be joining us for, say, the rest of his life."

A hushed worry had crossed over the crowd.

_"Oh God."_

_ "He's lying, he can't possibly be dead!"_

_ "Everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine."_

Ellen had, with her congregation of yuppies and coked up friends, had tried to settle themselves, basically vibrating. If there was one solace with being left with Danny tonight, Hops had figured they both could be disdained over them.

Danny had found his seat by the rocks forming the pond in the center of the room, head held in his hands as that news was declared. "Hops," he said once, garnering the Grovyle's attention. Ever since he had been left with him, the Grovyle tried to be useful, consoling the younger Pokémon and the more skittish Humans even. That was all he could do as he looked to his partner's husband. "She's gonna get herself killed."

He growled at the thought. Growled at it just like how he couldn't bring himself to a run or feel a real fight within himself. The other Pokémon though, with the Rocketeers, nothing had seemed to be wrong with them. He felt lethargic, and fighting against it tired him out.

"Yeah?" Danny lifted his head from his hands. "How can you say that after what just happened?"

Hops had growled again. _Have more faith in your wife. _He had sounded of.

"And am I not allowed to worry then?"

Hops had wished he had some wheat to chew, then and there, grinding his teeth. Though this was childish. The last thing that Danny needed was anger, and he knew that he was being unfair. He was a good trainer, a good man, despite his faults.

_Then just think about what she's going through._

The Grovyle and Danny locked eyes, a moment of understanding, even clarity, before a scream echoed through the hostages. There had been a clear view of the elevators, one of them dinging open. The guards on hand had sprung, confused, until one had rounded into sight of the elevator, yelling out for his compatriots to come over as he pushed the hostages back from getting a closer look.

The heavily armed, lax guard had gone rigid, gun drawn as he pointed it all the hostages and single handedly quieted them.

Hops had again jumped on Danny as he stood up to see himself:

The hostages had seen at the same time what all the Rocketeers saw:

A body, a Rocketeer with his black top gone, only revealing his bloody undershirt with bullet holes in it, one squarely in his head as well. The most peculiar detail had been what was written across his chest:

**"MAZAL TOV! NOW WE HAVE A TOMMYGUN!"**

Archer had ran to it, dropping his sandwich and entering the elevator to see one of the worst things to happen: Someone had gotten the jump, and then some, of one of his men.

Someone had been a **threat**.

* * *

**December 24th**

**8:30 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

It was easy, jamming the elevator between floors after she loaded his body in and propped it up, sending it down as she ridden on top of it. Harder was for her to just lay there, so close to the hostages.

The blue haired ringleader repeated her written words slowly, McCain getting some morbid amusement from it. Archer was annoyed surely, and also himself morbidly intrigued, approaching his body, slowly, two fingers out and pressing upon the lettering and then holding those fingers to his nose. He seemed relieved, McCain assuming that he thought it was written in the man's blood.

Peering through the gap between elevator and door she counted how many armed men she could see. Four indistinct figures through the tiniest of cracks: to peer any further would risk revealing herself.

She had taken a marker back from the table, black again, using her right arm this time as a note taking pad. Four marks, at least, and then a fifth, she putting a strike through that.

All of them had been masked save for Archer. Curious, she thought.

Though it _had_ been Archer. She had seen his picture recently, some paparazzi piece of him in Alola apparently spending some of his legitimately made cash on luxury. The man did work at Silph legally for quite a while to build up his wealth; Arceus and the Holy Savior knew it was a lie if McCain didn't know that Danny had been making the same money now with the promotion.

Enough for her to quit working and return home and live a quiet life.

"What're we gonna do?" One of the gunmen had asked as he came into the elevator as well. Behind him his Pokémon, an Arbok, slithered ready, its head bobbing up at the air. It was smelling something.

There wasn't much McCain could do about her pissed pants. The noses of Pokémon were a factor she could never truly account for, but she did her best, laying on oil and grease from the elevator, it masking her scent enough that the Arbok wrote it off for the moment.

Archer had crossed his arms, only after reaching out, palming his nostrils and mouth. Still warm. "Tell Cheren to radio Blue and bring him up." he said, quietly, concerned. Quickly she had reached to the bag and the radio, thumbing the audio control down so as to not pick up the message. She couldn't afford being caught on that. "Don't tell him anything, I'll take care of it." With one last remorseful look at the dead man he finally looked away, back to the crowd of hostages. "Store Lillie's body in one of the tarps we brought the equipment in. We'll take him when we finish here."

Cheren. Blue. Lillie. She knew those names. The entire damn world did. Two were Gym Leaders, and of them one was also former champion of the region they were in. The last, if she remembered correctly, had been some world renown Pokémon Scientist and Rehabilitator. It was too much of a coincidence that they had been named the same to her, and also the man she killed being a Lillie was also doubtful. It didn't take more than a few moments of thought to rationalize this idea:

It was a novel idea, if anything. Using the names of world-renowned trainers as their own to allow proper communications out loud, but to still obfuscate their identities. If they escaped, and the investigators needed names if they were heard, namedropping the heroes of the world would've done nothing. To simply say "Team Rocket" also would've muddied the waters. She wasn't in the justice intelligence community anymore, but had her contacts. She would've known if Rocket had truly been back on the rise.

Something was up, a massive piece of subterfuge that she couldn't formulate entirely yet.

Beneath the radio frequency on her left arm she wrote down their names just so he could identify if she had the opportunity, all but Archer himself had covered their faces with some sort of balaclava or mask. It was still a point of curiosity to McCain that Archer himself didn't, but the man had always been some showboat anyway, and if this still, past the beyond violent execution, was still a Rocket plan, there needed to be someone like him up-top she figured.

Archer.

Blue.

Cheren.

Lillie. His name written down and crossed off like the tally marks on her right arm.

"Come on Archer," one of the gunmen in the elevator had pressed Archer, out of view for her above. "We have to do something about this."

Archer responded in a repeated answer. "We're going to tell Blue his brother is dead."

Every person had a life. A family. A mother and father. Sons or daughters maybe. Loving Pokémon, hopefully. They were raised into this world and how they went out was tragic, almost every time. The tragedy of her killing Lillie tonight was that she had killed someone's brother. She told herself the truth though, remembering what that meant, craning her head down and trying to get enough of an angle at the crowd of hostages that she saw three more gunmen guarding at least. She tried her best to see her own family.

While she was doing that Lillie's body was wheeled out, the screaming from hostages starting as they saw a dead man probably for the first time in their lives. "Hey Cheren!" She heard a man scream. "Radio Blue, and get his ass up here! Nothing more or less!"

The radio message was sent and above her the other elevator had begun to whir from below in the other shaft, peering over as she tallied up three more people on her right hand, she couldn't look before her own elevator, in order to be more efficient in terms of elevator business, was sent upward and the door before her close. Bracing herself on the cable pulley, she passed by twenty floors in an instant, glad that she already been on her belly when in an abrupt stop, she was sent to the top floor.

Luck showed favor to her for the first time that night. She was planning to be up there anyway, clambering up to the maintenance scaffolding from the elevator itself, into what was most likely the maintenance hub for the elevators on the roof of the building, wires and left behind tools left behind as she felt the frigidity of the air. She was glad that she had a sweater on, for, only now remembering, she had only her underwear on beneath.

On concrete flooring again from the scaffolding, the maintenance access hub lit brightly by fluorescents, she took note, fan grates offering peeks at the Saffron City below, confirming that was on the roof. A door was spotted around a corner and up more stairs besides an electrical generator, heavy and metal with a push bar. Crudely as she went for it several pinup posters for lonely maintenance workers had been plastered on an electrical box on the wall. Mostly women. One Gardevoir.

She shook her head, her breath letting out her thoughts: "Creeps."

She didn't think twice about tearing them down as she passed, feeling the frigid air of Saffron as she finally went out to the roof, one hundred stories up.

* * *

Even in his placated state, Hops knew when a fight was brewing. He could smell it on the air and his ears alerted him to what many of the more predator Pokémon also picked up on in that room. Peering through the guards, back toward the personal offices, had been nothing less than a table being overturned by a man murderous.

A single gunman had come from the elevator after the body that had emerged from the elevator had been carted away. Hops and Danny knew right away what that meant. Either they were all going to die because of her, or they were all going to be saved, and honestly the gulf between both options had been thin enough to still worry. Still, Hops didn't blame her, if he were in her shoes (or lack thereof if he had known) he would've done the same thing. He wouldn't have left them.

Beckoned away by Archer into an office visible by the hostages, there was no fluff or padding for time: the gunman erupted in a burst of anger as he was told the truth, throwing stuff around the room and pulling his mask off until, after a few moments of well-deserved outrage, his shoulders taken by Archer and shoved against the windows toward the hostage group.

"Don't look!" One of the guards yelled at those that had picked up the commotion, waving his rifle at them. Hops did however, through the legs of those he hid behind.

Maybe, if it hadn't been for whatever was happening to him, his senses would've been fully up, and he would've heard this:

"God dammit! God dammit Archer! I need whoever the hell who he thinks he is dead! You hear me!?" The gunman named Blue had reached back and grabbed Archer's collar as Archer grabbed his shoulder. In that moment of weakness Archer had control. He always did. The two other Rocketeers with him in that room did nothing but watch on. Damning the lack of air he was getting Blue had ripped his mask off, damn close to hyperventilating. A young man, younger than most. The only younger had been Silver, still working away at the vault. To see pain in his eyes, Archer hadn't been insensitive.

"You'll have their body!" Archer yelled at him back, to his face, spit being exchanged between the both of them. "But not at the cost of what we're trying to achieve here! If you go off the plan Lex won't have time to break into the vault and Lyra won't be able to plant the detonators! We'll all be dead!"

Blue had burned. "So we're just gonna let my brother's killer loose on us?! My own flesh and blood Archer!"

Archer had slapped the man for even implying, yelling back at him before he could do anything else. "Once the vault is broken through and our escape route secured, we'll call the police and let them fumble about for hours trying to negotiate! Then you can tear this god forsaken building apart! If not well-" Archer looked back at the hostages, really meaning what he said when he called this building god forsaken. He despised what it meant to his life, to Team Rocket's life, and to Giovanni's. "They will be dealt with all the same."

"Just let me loose!" Blue spoke back, begging as a man does for his family. He was the younger brother, his face less worn than Lillie's. "Just me and my Pokémon!"

"No!" Archer yelled back at him again, pressing him more against the glass. "We have a plan!"

"And if he alters the plan?!"

Lillie was supposed to be one of the men holding down the front from an assault. One less man there against the police was taxing on the survivors, but with enough planning and firepower, could be compensated. Still, Blue had a point, Archer could admit that.

"Put on your mask, recompose. We'll handle it." An order, and that was that. They were professionals. Many of them not on the same particular record, but professionals and veterans of the illicit arts. Some more than others. Archer looked to the most experienced man, the most relaxed in that room, leaning against the desk with his battle rifle held as if a cane. He nodded slowly, once, to let Archer know that he approved of how he handled it. "May," Archer addressed him before turning to the other, "Calem. One of you go down to the defensive position. Make up for him."

May had pointed at Calem, and that was that, Calem going off down the elevator as Blue calmed himself.

Back out in the hostage pool Hops had made it back to Danny after another pace through the crowd. Enough calm and quiet had settled over the hostages, dealing with their situation, that they had finally talked amongst themselves, revealing injuries from the original corralling. Danny had once roamed lands on his own, first aid was in his repertoire. He made himself useful there instead of just laying idle, worrying about his wife. The Grovyle tapped against his leg, drawing his attention as he finished applying a makeshift splint to one of the secretaries. "What's up?"

Hops could only bob his head ever so slightly, but Danny understood. A worried look had been put on his face realizing what Hops meant. "She can't put herself in this position. It's been years since she's even done anything remotely like this." He rubbed his hand down his face remorsefully. "If she gets herself killed I swear to god." Fists formed in his hands, and, surprisingly, a claw gently pressed on one of them, the other tipping Danny's head up. Eye to eye. It was rare but they had done so for once, and as Danny looked into his beloved's first partner's eyes, he saw that they shared the same sentiment. If anything happened to her, they wouldn't care what happened to them. Not as long as the people that did anything to her paid.

Her capabilities, what she had been known for, not many people made the connection that Daniel McCain was indeed Janie McCain's husband. It took a while for her to assume his last name as a cop anyway. With the way Danny worked, and how long he stayed at the building afterhours, one might've mistaken that he didn't have a wife. A cursory look at his ring finger would've said otherwise however. It was a miracle no one recognized her at the party, beneath her rugged tan of Ranger work and a chip on her shoulder from a life she was brought back into; the booze and, perhaps, coke helped that disguise.

"I hope your wife made it out, McCain." A coworker had mumbled to him as he stood back up from those who had to lay down. Looking over his shoulder, Danny had to agree.

_"Mayday! Mayday! Emergency! Anyone copy on this band? Team Rocket has returned to Silph, I repeat, Team Rocket has returned to Silph and-!" _Her voice returned and was silenced as fast as anyone who hadn't known it could notice. The radios on the belts of some of the guards rang out before they realized that voice was none of theirs, shutting the radios off. In the office, Archer's own rang of the same tune. Danny's blood went as cold as Hops'.

Archer and Blue looked urgently at their radios, May dazing out, rolling his head, listening intently as the message went off again.

_"I repeat! Team Rocket has returned to the Silph Building and are holding at least thirty or more hostages on the 83__rd__ floor! They are armed with automatic weapons and dangerous Pokémon!" _The voice was yelling, urgent, and, most dangerously, clear.

"A woman?" Blue hadn't realized that possibility admittedly. The language she spoke, it was of grit and familiarity. She wasn't separate from the person who killed his brother. She might've _been _that person. The message on Lillie's shirt did say _we._ "Security guard we missed?" Blue pressed further of Archer, the man thinking a bit as he listened to her voice.

"No. We checked the shifts. There was only one tonight scheduled. And usually they're just former police officers who are getting fat on pensions, this is something different…"

The IFF-antijammer module was readily apparent on the radios in the room. "How is she transmitting-"

May pointed up, his gesture whipping the air about. Their ECM was good, and the landlines were cut, but there was no need for them to put jammers all the way upstairs.

Archer's eyes widened. "The roof!"

May had pushed himself off the wall he was leaning on, ready to go, eager to go it seemed, but Blue had a better claim, waving the bigger man down and back. "I've got this." There was blood boiling in his words as he ran out, Archer not stopping him. "Rui! Serena! With me!"

Two guards had gone with, and even if May wanted to go, he couldn't. Archer looked at him, trying to see his eyes through dimmed goggles, not a speck of skin on him seen through his tactical gear. He was outfitted, more than anyone else, like a professional, and perhaps the right one to send. Archer couldn't say no though, not when Blue had felt pain fresh. "Stay here," he ordered, picking up his revolver from the desk. "We have to keep things in line."

On and on then, before he shut his radio off, Archer listened before returning to the main chambers. _"Ten or more Team Rocket members including Archer himself all armed and dangerous, I repeat again! Team Rocket has returned to Silph!"_


	4. 8:45 PM to 9:10 PM

**December 24th**

**8:45 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

As far as Santa would've been concerned for his flight, he would have no problems above Saffron City. Clear sky around, nothing but a black sky, devoid of stars due to the light pollution. That was fine though as McCain busted out of the maintenance access, finding herself on the walkways on that roof, all put their for either maintenance workers or the occasional helicopter landing.

Loneliness and cold was all she felt, despite her sweater. Looking around she saw nothing but sky and the dark of night. Out in the distance, to the east, she could see Celadon. Home. To the north: Mt. Moon. South had been, at the very edges of her view, Vermillion Bay. All of Kanto had been around her, and still she found no help.

Gun in her shoulder she had scanned the walkways, slowly walking on cold metal that she had been pained to go through with her bare, dirty feet. The caution was needed out of habit, justified by sound as she heard sound above her on the helicopter pad.

Looking out the windows from 88 a thought had crossed one of the million neurons going off in her head, put down as a matter of temporary culture shock. Flying-Type Pokémon didn't like flying, particularly, over urban areas like Saffron. She saw none even near the tower, and at the distant clouds she saw their dots. It would've been so, so handy for her to get the attention of them.

When she found one, finally, her thoughts weren't of her own help, but of theirs.

She had seen this before: Pokémon flying over toxic fumes, poisoned, sprawling on the ground after hitting it. It was a nasty piece of work, cruelty written out with the way an organic body reacted to something against nature.

A Pidgeot had been sprawling on the cold tarmac of the helipad at the very top of the tower. Twisting and turning, lost feathers from rubbing against the rough texture of the pad surrounding it, blown away at intervals.

She dropped her Typewriter, letting it rest with her sling.

Ranger training had been returning to her as she made clicking noises with her tongue. "Hey, hey, bud. You good?"

Pidgeots were big birds. An average of 4'11. This example had cut that size. It cried out hearing the noise of a human, twisting so it looked at her, crying out a caw as it whipped its wings and-

Gust.

She knew it well, throwing her body left.

She had taken on her fair share of Pokémon in her day, most of them wanting her off their claimed territory, or maybe enraged by something she wanted to fix. She wasn't about to die, being blown off a building. The sweater offered no padding as she hit the ground hard, but now alert. Of that day of chaos and mystery, or grasping at ends of what to do next, what was happening to this Pidgeot was something she knew how to do comfortably.

She liked having her Styler in her holster instead of permanently mounted on her wrist, balancing the entire affair our by weight, and seeing as its communication ability was done would stay there. To have one break on a Ranger after all, usually, rendered them useless. McCain thought otherwise, but here, she remembered that she had been a Ranger as the Pidgeot writhed in pain on the ground, wings around its ears. Taking several step back as she stood back up, her Styler came out, the launcher portion of it wrapped around her left forearm as she had done the well-practiced motion of drawing the controller, its blue antenna radiating like a saber.

Depressing the trigger on the controller, a pressurized burst of air shot out the emitter portion of the Styler towards the Pidgeot.

For a thousand times over she had gone over the exact science on what the Stylers did: some cross between Pokéball technology and further pacifying energy that resonated with most, if not all Pokémon. However here and now she knew that it calmed them first, in some measure, making them more willing to have a clear head and listen to her. Whipping her right arm out, the antennae was a motion controller for the top that flew out, aimed just left of the Pidgeot as she, for what felt like the hundredth time in her life, did what Pokémon Rangers do:

Leaving behind a neon blue trail the top went past the Pidgeot on the helicopter pad, she thankful it was a flat surface to do this with. Her arm moving right had caused the top to start its loop around the Pokémon. Like a pendulum her arm swung back and forth several times, the emitter doing its loops around before eventually ringing out its bell of resonant lock. It did all it could as it was recalled to the Styler cleanly, the Pidgeot calming, taking deep breaths as its wings finally removed itself from their head.

She would've skidded if the tar of the helicopter pad wouldn't have destroyed her knees, running up and cradling the Pidgeot into her lap.

Care for nature, care for the world, care for its inhabitants. That was her MO as a Ranger, and she believed it true. It gave her so much peace after being a cop it saved her life. "Hey, hey. Focus buddy, focus." Reholstering her styler she had brought her hands, stroking the bird into a calm.

She ran her fingers through the feathers on its heads, its breathing subsiding as it finally opened their eyes clearly now. Its eyes were of pain and hurt, the tiniest of squeaks trying to form in its beak.

"My husband," she started, dropping into the tone she used with Hops; with all of Danny's Pokémon. "One of his partners is a Noctowl, so I know how you guys get. It's all about balance, yeah?" The Pidgeot, head in her hands, had nodded slowly, reclaiming itself. "What's wrong?"

The bird had chirped in almost inaudible terms, its throat barely moving, forming words that McCain could barely translate. Cognition of Pokémon-Speak had been difficult. There was no lingua franca between Pokémon species. Some had been similar, some had been so different they might've just come from different worlds, but it was an aspect of her job that she knew the different tones and speech varieties enough to communicate some sort of understanding.

_This air. It's wrong. It's so very wrong. In my head. Like a heatwave._

McCain had taken out her styler again with one hand, looking at the reception she got. No dice still, but her radio? That might've been it. Her priorities right then, now, had been this Pidgeot.

"Are you okay?"

It twitched its head painfully, trying to move its wings.

_I have never felt this heavy since I was a hatchling._

"Can I do anything? Please, I want to help." McCain had begged, seeing her breath turn into haze, a cloud.

_You have done enough. I must just be here. My flock will come._

It groaned again, saying that, McCain's bangs coming to in front of her face.

She knew what this was.

It was Archer. She read the reports, been to Lake Rage, known the science behind his radio signals and how it drove Pokémon mad. This was right up his alley. She thumbed her radio to broadcast as wide as it could before she brought it up to her face.

"I'm calling for help, just stay put. Okay?"

It nodded at her, gently being laid back as it turned over on its side, wings covering its head. The radio she had must've been tuned to work even with Archer's probably radio interference.

"Mayday! Mayday! Emergency! Anyone copy on this band? Team Rocket has returned to Silph, I repeat, Team Rocket has returned to Silph and taken hostages with lethal arms!" She turned over to the city lights, walking to the edge of the pad and looking down at an urban sprawl that could not hear her own voice. "I repeat! Team Rocket has returned to the Silph Building and are holding at least thirty or more hostages on the 83rd floor! They are armed with automatic weapons and dangerous Pokémon! Ten or more Team Rocket members including Archer himself all armed and dangerous, I repeat again! Team Rocket has returned to Silph!"

After a few moments, the radio cackled back at her.

_"This is Saffron City PD, be aware that using the word emergency over these bands is a federal offense. Please state your identity and CB license number."_

_Oh my god holy shit the gall of-_

She was going to state her name, her badge number, but stopped short. If they had found out that she was here, Danny would've been made a particular example of for her resistance, more likely than not. Another solution then as she couldn't believe what was happening.

"Do you hear yourselves?! The Silph Co. Tower is under siege, right now! Rocket is back!"

_"This channel is reserved for emergency use only. If you need help, call 911."_

McCain had dropped the radio from her face as she rolled her eyes, head, and damn near her spine before yelling back into it. "No fucking shit man! Do I sound like I'm ordering a pizza?!"

_ "If you remain on this line, we will have to report you to the regional FCC."_

"I don't want to be on this line! While you're out here finger fucking me they have already killed one hostage and are fortifying their positions! Please I beg you just send one black and white, a Jenny even, just come to Silph Co. and you'll see!"

_"As I said, if this is really an emergency, dial 911 on your telephone and-"_

What were the worst things that she could say to really get their attention? "I want to kill kids! I want to shootup your police department! I KNOW HOW TO BREAK INTO YOUR ARMORY SHITHEAD! I'll blow up fucking trashcans randomly during the Christmas street celebrations tomorrow! There! Come investigate me! Silph Co. Building!"

_"You're only making this worse for yourself." _The voice on the other end plainly said.

"Alright then! Just bring the fucking SWAT team or I'll swear to God I'll shoot Sevson myse-!"

The telltale crack of a bullet over her shoulder made her twitch down and around, grabbing her SMG in the same motion as she threw her radio back into her pocket. Three men had come for her, finally, red Rs like a neon light on their uniforms as they raised their guns at her from the other end of the helipad, having come up on the opposite end. The man up front had already gotten a shot off and ready to send more, but not before McCain had basically twisted around and, with one hand, her sling bracing the gun against her form, and let loose.

There was no way she was going to hit anyone, but it proved her message true to the Rocketeers: She had a Tommy gun. The fear in their eyes of someone actually shooting back as they came up the stairs to the helipad sending them stumbling to either side: most importantly, not shooting at her as she broke off running toward a slanted vent close enough to the edge of the pad.

For a second the Rocketeers thought her mad: jumping off the building with her momentum. But no, she hit the metal of the vent, sliding down as involuntarily gravity brought her down it. She didn't remember if she knew there was a catwalk below the vent or she was really, really tempting luck today, but as she slid off the only thing keeping her from falling right off the building had been thin railing.

Hitting it with a thud, the breath knocked out of her, her lungs burned through her chest as she saw a hundred stories below.

For a moment she thought it was good Hops wasn't here. He'd be ruined straight with his fear of heights and flying.

Pushing herself off the railing she heard their boots running to that edge of the helipad, she twisting around and putting herself up against the vent that proceeded back down into the building, aimed pre-emptively up. She should've waited a second more, but the second she found the black silhouette against the inky black sky she squeezed off the trigger, a burst of gunfire gone off. When it was done three heads poked back up, and she ran as a volume more of gunshots returned to her.

"FuuuAACK!" Guttural sounds from her throat rose as she ran, behind another maintenance portion of the roof, gunfire breaking concrete and metal in sparks.

Without vocalizing the lead Rocket grunt had held out his hand to the two others, pointing at the catwalk and back from where they came. The two of them understood as they took off running.

She had been basically going around the perimeter of the roof, the walkway unkind to her bare foot. Any chance she could stick a toe in and break it high, but she had better footing than that. Not ever since hiking had become her life as a Ranger.

She looked over her shoulder as she rounded the corner of the walkway, seeing two Rocketeers get on it as well as she paused, turning on her heels, and again opened fire.

The two men ducked as sparks flew up from bullets hitting the walkway around them, the gun clicking empty as she swore, hitting the release lever and continuing her run as the walkway led behind some vents.

_Two! There were only two! _She screamed at herself as she dug a stick mag out of her pocket, ramming it in as she locked back the chamber. It'd been a long time since she had to take cover, so maybe that's why as she backed up, walking in reverse with her gun trained up in case the Rocketeers came running, she was exposed, peeking out of the vent stands.

Even just her shoulder would've been enough to put her out…

The third Rocketeer had dashed across the roof, aiming down on her as he had gotten the jump.

The tugging of the wind, a burst of air. What he thought only was a gust had been, technically, true. Just a burst of gust that through off his aim and put him to the floor, gunshots randomly going off as he fumbled and alerting McCain to move.

Blue yelled out in pain and frustration as he hadn't even cared to look where the wind came from, hoping to get another shot: She was gone, a door open leading into the structure beneath the helipad.

"Shit!"

The reason he had blown: Pidgeot. It rose shakily from the center of the helipad, ignored until now, its status as a bird of prey not forgotten as, even with weak limbs, had its piercing eyes looking right through to Blue.

It spread its wings again, but no more wind came. It couldn't swing again, but that was okay. It did what it needed to do.

"Stupid fucking bird!"

* * *

McCain fumbled, transitioning remaining magazine for her gun into her pocket, slamming in the current one again just in case as she aimed backwards of the door she slammed through, come back to the elevator maintenance walkways she had come from minutes earlier, albeit on the opposite side. She only shook herself again as she heard another gunshot ring out above her.

The Pidgeot…

She swore to herself, knowing now that it had become the reason why she hadn't been shot out there from a bad angle. Letting a Pokémon die? Doing this whole thing without proper police involvement? She was a terrible cop and a terrible Ranger now. How many laws had she broken? Or did it matter at all when the situation was this fucked and, she looked down at her belt, the one with the badge on her.

Pausing a moment, regaining her nerves and breath, she looked across the maintenance hallways. Between her teeth she let out a breath meant to curse, but could do nothing. Both the elevators had been recalled down and she couldn't ride them. Maybe there had been stairway access? She ran across to the center, peering down, only seeing the elevator shafts.

A long drop, so long that she couldn't see the bottom.

Boots above her moved and she had realized if they came back down there they would've had her on both sides. She would've been dead.

Escape. Escape. Escape. It's all that went through her mind. She was lucky enough, she remembered, that there had been a vent for her to slide onto when they first started shooting.

_Wait! The vents! _

Gun up she rushed back to the side of the shaft where she thought there was vent access. Ventilation had indeed been there to her delight: access to them even, just behind giant fans that were moving slowly enough to-

She poked her gun in first, the mass of steel and wood pausing the motor of the fan, wedged between it and a stabilizing bar.

Footsteps again. This time laterally, near her, not above.

Her feet were rubbed raw from a lack of any footwear, and they felt unkind, rubbing against dusty metal, she going feet first through the new access way she made.

"There!" She slid on her back through the tube, her feet hooking the sling of the Typewriter and pulling it through just as another burst of gunfire ricocheted around the fan shaft, sparks peppering her as she fell out the otherside to another catwalk, this time within an even smaller shaft for ventilation. Dark blue light filled her, and it was only because of the ambient lighting that came from the other fans exposed to nightlight.

Falling over she had cover on the grate walkway, below the fan assembly that divided her and the Rocketeers. Without second thought she pulled her Hi Power out of its holster, the fan spinning slow enough for her to peek above its lower cusp and see the three figures that came running down the maintenance hallway to see if they could follow.

She didn't allow, four pops of gunfire erupting through, two bullets catching the fan, the rest coming way too close to the Rocketeers causing them to duck and cover.

It gave her time to think, looking down the shaft and seeing another, larger, much faster spinning fan sending cool air down. She would've looked like a Scyther's dinner if any part of her found its way down there, several stories.

Looking down the closest vent had been about a story and a half down, and across. Each side of the vent shaft bearing openings to the rest of the system. She wasn't about to jump, not with how she was now, the shaft no more than five of her wide on her stomach. Far enough to make her worry while she had been, out of lack of better terms, normal. Now, under gunfire, running for her life, it was worse.

She was nothing but stupid or courageous though. That and running out of options as she looked back down the fan shaft and saw the white eyes of someone trying to go for her. The white burned so brightly as she aimed again, this time standing up, the sights of her long-worn sidearm finding bead.

The shot that popped off was loud in that enclosed space, but not as loud as the bullet hitting the man's cheek, tearing through his teeth, and sending him through the floor as his right jaw was blown out. When the screaming started, so did the wildfire in response, more automatic fire coming her way as she ducked back down and hopes a bounced round wouldn't come through the fan.

"Ah fuck! Blue! I'm hit!"

"Rui! Go get Serena!"

"On it!"

A woman. Rui was a woman.

There weren't just men there, a note she made in her mind as she remembered their names. When she was safe, she would've written them down.

Serena hadn't been dead, but his words had been slurred, and his pain vocalized in screams.

Finally getting her Typewriter ready again, angling herself to fully shoulder it, this would've been it with the gun. She had a plan.

Standing up a full thirty round burst was eaten through, her teeth chattering as she tried her best through gunfire to tell them to leave her alone. When her gun clicked she had put her prayers in a sling. The railing of the walkway she was on was short enough for her to wedge the gun through and use it as an anchor, tossing the rest of the bag and the bag itself over the railing into the deep, denying any use they could get out of it. For what, well, she didn't think too much about it before she did it, but she prayed. She prayed for something to go right as she holstered her pistol, running the Typewriter through the bars of the railing and, with only one tug of the sling and one extra knot, unhooked the sling from one end and tied the remaining around the trigger guard.

She was automatic when she went over the railing, as if a mountain climber, breathing through her nose as if her last breaths and avoiding looking down into the dark past the murderous looking fan blade.

Wrapping the end of the sling she was holding onto around her fist, she lowered herself from the railing to the walkway, holding onto its own ledge as metal dug into her fingers.

A Ranger compatriot of hers at Fall City had a Monferno as a partner. She wondered if, if pressed, that Pokémon would've taught her anything about how to-

She let her weight drop and for a moment of pure terror she hung onto the sling and the sling alone, the railing creaking, but keeping. She wasn't falling.

"Okay- Fuck! Okay!" Her voice reverberated, bounced up and down the vents, the thumps of the fan below now present to her as she began to swing her legs to make herself a pendulum. She didn't even want to look up to see if her gun was bending or her knots were breaking, she just needed to do, rotating herself around to the vent directly across from her.

Upwards she heard the fan stop, again wedged by something. She didn't have enough time. Not enough. Not enough-

Three more swings were all she could manage, the last giving her enough momentum for her feet to touch the opposite end, pushing herself off letting go of the wrap she made around her hand and-

The Rocketeers thought again she had jumped down to death based on the smack of thin metal as Blue crawled through the fans. They knew better at this point though.

Not that McCain had been alerted as her hands clawed into the vent opening, sweat on her fingertips betraying her at that very moment.

The second time she slammed against the wall of the vent against the opening was the one that broke her grip, slipping down and over.

This was it. Her life flashed before her eyes, and, more than that, what her body would look like. She had seen dead men, women, and monsters a hundred different ways, and the worst had been them, splashed against the surface after falls factors and factors less than hers. If she even had a body left she hoped that they'd cremate it.

Mankind's primal urges and inclinations were plain: the three Fs. Fighting, fear, and fucking. There was a fourth however: falling.

Her hands automatically reached out as she fell down the shaft, the rows of vents lined up as she fell until, finally she hooked one.

She nearly screamed when she did stop falling, clawing up by pure instinct into the dusty vent only five stories above the fan sucking her down. She didn't know if her fingers pierced through metal but she found her strength and grip, pulling herself up and into something a TV dinner would feel like.

It would've been a bad analogy to say a Pokémon in a Pokéball however. Hops had told her the experience was actually quite pleasant.

Nothing was pleasant as she felt bile in her stomach come up, barely beat back down as her vision, in a daze, straightened out only to see a darkly lit vent straight ahead of her.

Crawling forward she came to her senses. Every movement of hers against the bent in sections of the vent made a drumming noise, and they couldn't possibly have known-

"She's in the vents!" She heard the man named Blue yell out. Which one, no one, not even her could properly say. That didn't mean they didn't try as gunfire roared into the vents, catching the lips of any opening the could see. Sparks even touched her dirty soles, she holding in a yelp as bullet casings fell down the shaft, the crack of metal being broken by the fan blade resounding. Biting her own tongue, she was sure she was going to bite it off, but nothing else came as she let out a bated breath.

Silence, the waiting game. One that the Rocketeers couldn't play.

_"Come on Blue let's get back down this isn't looking good for Serena!"_

_ "Shut up I almost have this bitch!"_

_ "I need help!"_

Another few moments and the sound of a bang against metal was heard, the sound of frustration McCain's sign of making it free. The panted and labored breathing of someone she shot through the mouth faded as a door was slammed and the elevator was sent back up.

Maybe if she just stayed in the vents all night, things would be better off. That was her thought as she slowed her breathing and brought her forehead against the metal vent she was on. However, her head soon began to rock.

"Oh yeah, sure Lunick, I'll take this request that you won't tell me anything about from my old department at the middle of the frickin' night. I'll come home for Christmas and fuck the husband I have in a dysfunctional marriage while he bends me over a desk that has my and a dead man's case notes on it. Sure. Yeah. All this while Mewtwo is involved." Was it her fault she was in this position? Maybe, after all, it had been. The threads of her gifted sweater were ruined by how much stress it'd been in, and given how much of a crawl she had ahead, she doubted it would survive much more.

Her life had been so much simpler when she was a teenage punk, and she yearned for those days back.

Hell, it might've been simpler, she decided, if she was a hostage.

A fanciful thought, but she was too far deep to even think about it. Taking in one breath, she stared down a cramped journey to take, thumbing the flashlight on her Styler on, still on her wrist. With a pistol in her other hand, she felt nothing more than a tunnel Ratatta.

* * *

A body didn't come out of the elevator this time, but a man whose face looked half-way there. The results of Jainie's fight for her life had, if the trend continued, been a display that the hostages were going to see pouring out of the elevator.

"Medic! Medic! We need Dawn!"

That amount of blood, the fact that half a man's mouth had been blown out with his jaw showing, while the hostages screamed or cringed as the guards yelled at them to look away, all Hops could do was grin. His Jainie really was giving them hell.

Dawn had been one of the women who had chopped away at the telephone lines. She had fine hands for such delicate work, so too she had been the best, or at least closest thing to a medic that the group had.

She had rushed over, up, into the office corridor as they had gone to the furthest away office: Daniel McCain's. His table had been swept of its contents in a loud cash, Serena put back first on as his face leaked onto the wooden surface. Archer had been there immediately, but had been met by the two that remained of the party that was sent for the interloper leaving the room.

Serena's legs kicked up as Dawn opened up her medkit, her legs slapped down by her, turning around, seeing Archer wide-eye'd. "You!" She pointed at her boss. "Hold his legs down, this isn't going to be clean."

Archer had done on command. As far as medical matters had been concerned, he had deferred it to the woman who looked like she knew what she was doing. She did, after all.

She was a former Joy gone the way of Team Plasma as well. A Pokémon extremist without a place in the world, who found herself with a man with half of his face gone.

"The blood is making it look worse than it is. Hold down his legs." She didn't even turn to Archer as she ordered him, and Archer did so, taking in a sight so visceral there had been a doubt planted. What was going on?

Dawn had taken off her mask to concentrate, ripping Serena's off as well, using it to dab for the spilling blood as she identified the issue.

Half of the man's teeth had been shattered, nerves exposed, flesh being dug into all the way back into-

"Bullets lodged into his jaw." Out from her med pack, pliers, tweezers. She went in almost as hard as the bullet did and Serena's screams had echoed throughout, the hostages even hearing them.

Some of the Pokémon had this worried look to them, but May had recognized it, standing tall over the crowd. He had barked at them, literally. Telling them to keep their heads in the game and ignore all that pain, all that horror. There was still a plan.

_Do you ever think about it? _A tilt head and a tap at Danny's knee as he sat on the edge of the pond again, more and more people asking him what to do. By consequence of him being a man of nature, out in the field, who was supposedly rough and tumble and new the "real" world of "real" danger, they had deferred their worries to him. It had put more and more onto his shoulders, holding his face in his hands as if hiding from the screams.

Hops had called for his attention. "What?"

_That Janie did that?_

Danny had looked at himself, turning back to the pond and seeing his reflection. "She didn't have a choice."

* * *

**December 24th**

**9:10 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

Lyra Kasper was a very busy person, for being such a young age. She felt that impossible yearn, that craving for a journey far bigger than herself once, and she went for it. It was, by her accounts, a very impressive act of constantly fumbling forward until, somehow, she found herself the leader of an entire league. The Indigo League had been thankful for her appearance three years after Red, for she filled in his place as the isolated champion simply preferred nature and his partners rather than any real media pursuit and politicking as was traditional for Champions.

It felt good then, to her, that she did beat him down every once and a while in fair combat when they did meet semi-annually for a battle, just cause. While he had been living the wanderer's life, she had assumed both their duties, responsibilities, as lead of the Pokémon competitive circuit in the Indigo League's two regions. Administrative, public, private; she was a persona of what a trainer could really be and become, and that hadn't been an act, surely, she told herself. She liked to think that she hadn't changed just because she had a cape and a fancy title.

Nope, she was still, just, Lyra Kasper. Hometown: New Bark. First Pokémon: Cyndaquil (now a Typhlosion). Age: Not old enough to drink legally but no one was gonna tell her not to. To be fair Misty and her had been assumed the same age, so on Misty's dime, just after her Christmas Eve show, she had taken the champion of the Indigo League out on the town. Or at least attempted to.

"You have like, this secret identity about you." Misty had aired to her as the two returned to the Cerulean Gym, it having been cleared out of spectators and reverted to what it was most days of the year: Gym, entertainment venue, and home for the Waterflower sisters. She had hardly dressed as people expected her out in public. Compared to her mermaid getup, the hoodie and jeans she had were preferred for her as she bummed around town as a local, not a celebrity.

Lyra had tiredly rubbed her eyes as the ding of the sliding doors greeted the two young women, the smell of chlorine blasting her as Misty took it in stride.

"I let my hair down, don't wear my cape, and I wore a baseball cap. I'm just an average gal', Mist'." She took said baseball cap off, fitting it into her hoodie.

"With the way people were hitting on you at the bar? Ain't nothing average about it."

Lyra had shrewdly twisted her face as the two passed by the massive pools into the back of the Gym, entering instead into the living area the Waterflowers had made for themselves. Still smelled like chlorine. Was that healthy? Probably not, Lyra figured. "Well good thing I'm taken."

That night on the bar was done before the second round of drinks had happened. It was a girl's night, respectively, but seeing as it was that time of year only Misty and Lyra had been alone. Misty's sisters were still out in the world, a traveling, water, smoke show, and Lyra, well, she was used to this. The job had made her like this. There was something on her mind and Misty was going to fight it all night if they were out, so they called it off early.

She had appeared for her responsibilities, shortly after Misty had left the crime scene and Janie McCain. Taking in reports and statements, gathering as much info as she could from the League's personal security team. The fact that the Indigo League had maintained a group such as the Gatekeepers, and the fact she had defacto command of them, had been a step, it felt, above everything she was assigned. It felt dark. Naturally the idea of Team Rocket alone trying to find and capture Mewtwo again had been cause for concern enough. But murder? It ramped everything up. Any idea of holiday cheer pushed out of Lyra's mind. Not that it had been there already that month.

"I haven't seen him in a bit, you know." Misty had said, lighthearted, but to Lyra it had been anything.

Silver. His full, legal name had been Anthony Del Silva. It was a surprise, but then again Silver had been full of surprises. He preferred Silver, he had told her one night, just before they had known what love was in regards to each other. It was a name he himself truly owned, not one connected to anything, anyone.

She understood and still knew him as Silver.

She had gone to great lengths to downplay she had been dating the boy who had been heir to Team Rocket and Giovanni. Those facts didn't matter when he had become a young man that had made, not only her proud, but his Pokémon, his growing group of friends that had been the gym leaders of the Indigo League, but most importantly: himself. He was proud of what he had become and he had confided that into her ear almost every night, loving her for believing in him to that end.

Still, despite all this, there had been changes recently, ones that, damning herself for it, she might've seen better if the damn job didn't get in the way.

"Me too." Lyra answered finally, finding her bag she had dropped off by Misty's living room couch. The entire room's walls had been that glimmering light of blue, for those walls had been, in all actuality, an Aquarium as big as any professional sort. Filled with, at least at current, sleeping water Pokémon in a simulated natural environment. Misty looked out at them with a satisfaction, eyes squaring at a Gyrados, at the bottom of it all, curled up, skin red, defiant against the blue.

Misty and Lyra had been good friends, young women like themselves in positions that many wouldn't really assume them capable of. Nessa out in Galar had also quickly been reaching out for their tutelage as well, overwhelmed with her new position, but the distance had been a factor. Still there was much support between all of them, and Lyra had needed it especially that night.

She didn't want to press on the subject of Silver, she had assumed, at first, relationship hiccups. Dating would always be hard for people like them. "You have my couch tonight, or one of my sister's beds, I'm sure they wouldn't mind."

"Mm. Thank you." Lyra had said getting her bag, bringing it over to the kitchen and its table and planting it down with a _thunk. _"But I'll be staying up for a bit."

Misty glanced at her watch. "Lyra, it's like, 1AM. Christmas Eve. I know it's been a long day but you've gotta sleep."

Out from her backpack, a radio set actually, CB sort. Placed on the table as she had attached a headset and tied her hair into a ponytail. "This time of night is when stuff goes down. It's when that Ranger got shot after all. Gotta have ears on, catch anything happening in the act."

The amount of crime fighting that did come with the territory of champion had been surprising at first, but her first tussle with Team Rocket had made her who she was, she recognized. It was only natural that it turned out this way. She knew May, out in the Hoenn Region, her champion policy had been defined by an actual almost superhero disposition. It helped that she did fly around the world with her dragons, arriving on scenes of trouble at almost impossible times, but Lyra knew she wasn't May. May had always wanted something grander for herself still.

Lyra just wanted her slice of the world to be right.

"You're being unreasonable." Under any other pretext, the stern of Misty's voice might've swayed her. She knew she was stubborn at times but this was different. This was personal. That late at night Lyra had no formality to ease her friend into her situation:

"Silver's gone, and I'm worried he's caught up in all of this."

"Oh."

Lyra nodded, moving herself into one of Misty's wooden chairs. There had been some Christmas lights set up, a little tree set up on the kitchen counter with various badges from the Indigo League used as ornaments, but it had hardly pressed into Lyra's souring mood.

"He was getting distant, these last few months," Lyra started, looking at the couch that, when she did fall asleep, had been ready for her collapse. Her cape had been rather versatile, more than anyone would tell her. Tonight, it'd serve as her sheet. "Now, yeah, I get it. Sometimes he needed space and-"

"And the League had you out in Sinnoh for a bit, right? Something about some conservation effort?"

Lyra nodded. With the way the world had been turning, the idea of regional Pokémon had been becoming a looser and looser concept. How many Hoeannic or Kalosian Pokémon had she seen in Kanto and Johto now? Not that she minded, but experts and researcher beyond her own pedigree had argued that such a disruption of the natural ecology was not healthy, and so she had attended a conference discussing such efforts going forward to do something about Pokémon migration.

"Even when I was home, he was… distant. Something was on his mind, and, well, I don't know what. He was going back to school to become a Pokémon Medical Professional, he told me, going to work with Professor Elm and Oak, but he kinda went harder than I expected into it. Then one day he was just, gone…"

His little office space in their apartment had piled high and higher with medical documents and books, and he indeed had been attending classes at a local college. Lyra couldn't be prouder of the fact he had been looking into such a humane career but it came at a cost. He was always looking for something in those books, she felt, and any interaction from her had been met with the old Silver. The one that had been annoyed at her presence, only to be quickly reeled back as he apologized.

So, she let him have his space, she going off on her own work.

Only in that last month had he simply disappeared.

Not that she had reported on it. She was a big girl now; she could find out where he had gone if there was an issue. Him dipping out of a life and going off on his own? Hardly his first time.

Though it was different when it came to her, if there was something wrong, he should've told her.

"He only brought his Feraligatr. The rest of his Pokémon, they're back at our apartment in Goldenrod." They cohabited, which was an awfully big step for young people such as themselves, but again one was a champion and the other had been son of a criminal lord. "That Feraligatr, he's the one he trusted most, and I haven't seen much of him either when Silver was… drifting off."

"What makes you think he's not soul searching?" Misty asked, pulling up a chair now.

"Because it can't be a coincidence this is all happening right now." Lyra had declared with an age, so unlike her. "Between a dead Pokémon Ranger in your backyard allegedly by Team Rocket goons, and my boyfriend, son of the original leader of Team Rocket, having gone missing at the same time? I can't just write it off."

Misty furrowed her eyebrows at her champion. "You really don't think-"

"No." Lyra had squashed that unsaid implication before it even left her mouth. "But gone off to chase them? Yeah, I can see that. But God, if only he knew what they're doing now." _Killing people. _Lyra had seen the photo of Parker's body, and more than that, seen it carted out of Cerulean Cave, put in the Cerulean PD's morgue, waiting for transfer off to the Ranger Union. To think of Silver falling victim like that, it scared her.

Her leg bounced up and down in anxiousness as she closed her eyes, gripping the headset before gathering herself up, putting it on and tuning into the air waves. It wasn't just police she was looking for, but also trainers, reporting to each other. That late at night lonely men and women who had made their own journeys often had these radio sets on hand, speaking out into open air and hoping anyone had reached back out to make the night a little less lonely.

In one conversation, those who had been out in the region, alone and in nature, had wished each other Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, speaking and recounting of their homes. Most had been homegrown in Kanto and Johto, but some had come from as far away as Sinnoh and Alola. Who had they left behind? What were they looking for? On that night people tend to open up to radio strangers.

Over the police channels: Police bellyaching and not being home, all the same, complaining that no one was going to do anything tonight.

Misty had been a good friend, good enough to not go to bed as Lyra toiled, casting her line out into an impossibly big field and hoping she found something that told her her beloved was okay.

In another conversation, some spoke about the events of today: it was still hazy, and people didn't pay attention when it had been Christmas Eve, but Chief Sevson had announced there was a murder in a cave system just outside of Cerulean City, and an investigation had been ongoing. He advised many trainers in the Mt. Moon area to be advised, and sleep in groups for safety.

So she brought had whipped up some hot chocolate, smooth and creamy with Starmie stars in its body, watching Lyra be so intently focused on the machine she had been fiddling with, her phone also out, browsing social media.

Delivering two cups over, they had been untaken however as, even over the headphones, Misty had heard the next message by chance from the Saffron City PD:

_"Dispatch, what's the issue?"_

_"Some crazy woman was spouting Team Rocket was back at Silph Co. Nonsense I think. It's a Code-2. Send over a patrol. Don't expect much, probably just a homeless woman trying to get into jail for warmth and a meal. The shelters are full anyway."_

"_Copy, we'll send Jenny over."_

Before the hot cocoa had cooled off the two women had been out the door, Lyra gathering up her cape and putting it on before drawing a Pokéball from her belt:

Popped out, it had been her Dragonite, looking down on her with a purpose. The two women had climbed onto its back, and in short order, it had been picked up on national defense radar as it sped toward Saffron City.


	5. 9:20 PM to 9:40 PM

**December 24th**

**9:20 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

All his training recently, the way he had stretched out his mind in a field that people usually took years to study into, it had been a mind boggling and painful process, but he'd do even more if he had the time. He had no time with how far along _it _had gotten.

Floor 85 had been bookkeeping. It was desperately needed in a diverse corporation like Silph. Below 80, almost every floor was a department, give or take a few who had been important enough to garner several floors, and each of them had been given the prerogative to pursue their own research and development. Silph had been big enough to allow such a wide berth of interest. For every success in that way of work, there had been an insurmountable amount of failures.

As Silver had been combing through hundreds of folders he had learned that, the desk he had taken position at as he did his corporate espionage had been a messy, folders and papers pushed off, reports detailing various projects that had crossed over Silph's budgets.

More specifically he had been toiling over the records from medical sciences and pharmaceuticals. Silph had a great deal to do with the Pokémon Centers and their technology, blowing open the idea of free healthcare for Pokémon for all but the grisliest of injuries and illnesses.

All but had been the reason Silver had been there.

The Master Balls weren't the first, or the last, of Silph's machines of magics. They were just the ones that people knew the most. Sometimes inventions had been too perfect, to great and powerful to actually let loose on the world. Literal magical elixirs sourced from the toxicology of Legendary Pokémon sweat, machines that let people see dreams, a way to harness infinite power. These were the type of creations that Silph had created, kept under lock and key, and then scrubbed from existence in all but the most menial and systemic ways.

All Silver had asked for, had wished for that Christmas, was a cure.

If this was anywhere, it would've been in the vault, and if it was in the vault he needed to know how to use it, what to do.

So, he had been nose deep in manuals and documents in such dry language, his focus had been so tight he didn't hear the rumbling above him.

He didn't hear the grumblings and sudden yelp of a woman that had been in over her head for the last two hours, feeling the vents she had been crawling through, away from danger, give way.

He hadn't been so obtuse as to ignore the ceiling give way in the walking path between cubicles off to his side, the man yelping, going for the pistol in his belt and holding it deftly, whipping out of the way and looking at what the hell had been happening:

Half an assembly of air vents had come out of the ceiling in a dusty deconstruction, and like a slide a woman had come tumbling out of the metal tube. With the dust Silver had taken out a mask, putting it on himself, both to breath and to hide his face.

The woman had been powdered white, swearing up a storm as Silver levied his gun at her uneasily.

"Fucking shit, god damn son of a bitch, fuck! Shit. Shit!"

The wrangling mess of a woman, her sweater once a bright red, now darkened by dust and blood, dirt and grease, it had been slowly eeking over to her face as she scrambled up onto her feet and saw him, caught off guard. He was a shorter, thinner example than the rest of the gunmen but a gunshot from any person had been deadly all the same. _Oh god, this is it. After all that?_

"Aw, fuck."

The young man had pointed the gun at her, allowing her to creakily stand after falling from the ceiling, hands frozen at her sides. It was a cruelty to her to prolong it any longer. _Just shoot dammit! Don't make me wait!_

She was taller than him, standing straight fully, shaking the dust off of herself and making it fall like snow. The sweater had been ruined but she wasn't about to just run around in only her bra, not that she had a choice, staring down the barrel of that gun.

Though the shot never came as the man frozen, his young eyes behind the mask so impossibly wide, stunned.

Details. They came out at her as such had gathered herself, the shot that was going to come never manifesting as time dragged out, coughing and seeing puffs of dust come out of her throat, she raising her hands up to her waist, a perplexed look coming over McCain's face. He had no Rocket uniform, instead dressed in only a simple black shirt and dark khakis. She took a step toward him and he had made a point to step back, pointing the gun even straighter at her.

And yet, McCain didn't feel threatened. Perhaps it was out of familiarity, approaching wild Tauros or other wild Pokémon who had been just about ready to throttle her, bargaining for her health in non-aggressive body language. Though there was something else, she tilted her head, looking at the pistol.

It was a nine-millimeter short. A concealed carry pistol. Not meant for fighting, more for surviving. The safety hadn't even been clicked down.

She glanced at the names written on her left forearm, having taken the time to write the new names while she was in the vents. "Which one are you eh? Blue? Dawn? Brendan or Lucas?" Her words were less spoken and more breathed now, tired, after so long. It was perhaps the only reason why this man had still been alive as he turned over, hands up. She didn't have the heart to draw her gun and cut down a young man when the circumstances like this. Not a man, she noticed more and more. It was in his eyes: he was a boy. A boy to her at least.

He shook his head silently, damning he hadn't turned on his radio just to check on what the rest of the crew was doing. Still, he didn't care for it in the end, just as long as he got what he needed.

All that was hard to think about though with this woman in front of him.

"I didn't kill no one who didn't shoot at me first. I didn't want to do it, you gotta believe me." Was she okay with those being her last words? Justifying who she had killed all her life? She took another step toward him arms raised high, and up. She had killed people. Silver had held onto his gun tighter.

Could he do it? Pull the trigger himself?

She glanced down at his belt: a single Pokéball.

"What's your name?" She asked. "You a trainer? Hired muscle?"

"Y- you first!" He finally spoke, his voice that of a young man, in fear. Did she really look that grisly?

She shouldn't have told him, but she did. Honesty was the best policy, and, if worst come to worst she could've drawn on him faster than he could realize that . "Janie McCain. I'm a Pokémon Ranger."

Silver's eyes widened. They were that of familiarity. The words left his mouth without his control. "You shot my father's men when they tried to take up business again… You killed them without warrant. You killed so many people."

"Your father?" McCain didn't know what that meant with the rest of that statement, but this young man, she knew who she was before she identified. That she wasn't just a random name. She was someone notable. Someone who was the worst type to be here. If this man's father had ownership of Rocket grunts, did that mean…? "What's your name?"

"Silver." He tore off his mask, and a face known to her was revealed. It wasn't a codename; it was his **actual **name.

"**Oh my God.**" She knew who this was, very much so. How many briefings had been conducted on occasion, sent down from the International Police, about trying to find Silver? To question him? Only for that to be called off when he had been discovered as under the protection of the Indigo League champion herself.

Silver remembered McCain, more and more. He remembered one of the last things he had read of her, years ago:

No-knock raids in the middle of night against those who were suspected of remaining with Giovanni were being conducted. It had piqued his interest in the new that day when it end up with a cop put underneath criminal investigation after a raid gone wrong: She didn't kill an innocent man, the night of her last SWAT raid, but she killed a man who, by any other measure, was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. He could've had a second chance, before McCain led her men through his apartment's door. But fear had taken him over and he ran for a knife.

For his troubles, McCain had put buckshot in his chest and painted his kitchen red.

The dead man, former Rocketeer, didn't do it out of self-defense however. Far from it.

"You're a killer."

"I'm a cop." She cursed herself mentally. _Was a cop._

He was thankful there had been someone like her, hunting down his father's men, all those years ago. It put them in their place in a way he couldn't. He thought differently now, knowing that many Rocketeers didn't want to be criminals, but the Silver of yesterday had been different from the one of today.

"That was a different me." Silver's eyes narrowed at her as she explained further. Once, long ago, he too had that rage against Team Rocket. Not by her measure however, and not by her methods. "What're you doing Silver? I thought Lyra sent you straight." She didn't know what compelled her to actually slap the gun out of his hands as if it was a toy and he a misbehaving child, grabbing his shoulders suddenly, closing the distance. "You're a good kid. We thought it true."

He had been seen with Lyra rarely during charity events, bringing Pokémon like their own to communities to be awed that, to show and tell that Pokémon trainerdom had been a fulfilling life to live.

Silver seemed frozen by her tenacity, hearing the name of his girlfriend, the gun clattering to the floor as she got that face of anger and tiredness off and instead became caring of him.

"I- I don't…" He stuttered, his own hands to his face as he backed off from her grip, finding a table to set his ass down "I don't want to be here…"

McCain breathed exasperated. "Me neither, kid. Me neither… but why are you here? What are you doing? Are you leading these men?"

"You first." He looked at her through disheveled red bangs.

She made an annoyed sound in her throat. "I'm the one with a gun and," she looked at her wrist, one kill and one probable, dusting her shoulders even more. "I know how to use it." She deserved after the night so far for her to be answered. Priorities, she realized. She glanced around the room: no one else had come. It was just him and her in that office space.

"I'm not… here for the reasons they are… Are you investigating who they killed at Cerulean Cave?" He decided that was the reason she was here. It made the most sense.

McCain nodded, gesturing to her belt. It was her badge. Then she had pointed at her holstered Styler. "I'm… a convenient blend. Once was a cop here, and now a Ranger."

"Mm." Silver said, seeing her looking down on him with an expectant look, arms crossed. She was wearing that ruined sweater, partly tightened by the holsters around her shoulders and back. He had heard rumors she had disappeared and reappeared out in the Ranger Union, and the truth was in the Styler that she had in one of those holsters. "What?"

"You're Giovanni's heir." McCain had more than pointed out. "You don't think I wouldn't be suspicious that a bunch of Rocketeers are here and you as well?" Why she hadn't cuffed him right now- she glanced at the telephone and its cord on the same table he sat, she could make it work- was beyond her, but he definitely was apart from the other Rocketeers.

"I promise you; I want nothing to do with what Archer is doing. All I want from here is just something to help my family."

"Family?" McCain parroted, she pointed down at his belt. He nodded. "What could they need, aren't you like, living a good life with a frickin' Pokémon Champion now?" Silver winced, and McCain had didn't want to make him. Something was very wrong and she felt it as someone who had a Pokémon of her own. If this was the same Silver that the reports said he had much to do with his Pokémon, a lot of who he was was part of those that became part of his team. She understood it more than he would believe.

His hand drifted down to his belt, and for a moment, McCain had gone to her HiPower, sitting in its holster, there was no need however as she let it go without drawing. He palmed his single Pokéball, it miniaturized currently. Inert. Pokémon held in that stasis were aware, in a measure, like a dream, of what had been going on outside but were otherwise just "resting". Some Pokémon hated the feeling, some had loved it. Hops had detested it so much he had spent much of his life outside of one, but there were moments where he did need to go in there: when he was poisoned, hurt, that it was better off for him to be in there instead of more harm or damage to progress. It was like being frozen, preserved in a way.

In a glint of Christmas light that had decorated the cubicles McCain noticed the roller mark that denoted where this Pokeball had been from: Professor Elm's lab. It had been the starter he stole. She had read that police report filed so long ago.

"My Feraligatr. He's in bad right now. The only reason he's not- not…"

Only one word could make a young man like Silver, like her even, pause when thinking about their partner.

"Say the words." McCain urged him. She knew what he meant.

"**Dead** is… is." He looked distant, offering a worn Pokéball from his belt as he unhooked it, holding it in his palm. "He has **cancer**. A rare form. A once in a _decade _case."

The PokéCenters of the world were marvels of medicine, all thanks to the company whose building they were in, but, unfortunately, their miracle did not go that far. Some things were just too advanced, too complicated, for a Nurse Joy, even one that was specially trained, to take over.

All of McCain's current worries had fallen away temporarily. Nothing about where they were, or who had been shooting her, or the spiral staircase she was falling down again as she needed to survive. It was just her, empathizing, seeing a young man beg for the life of someone he loved. She reached out and sandwiched the Pokéball between her worn palm and his, feeling the warmth that came from it. "I'm sorry, Silver, **I'm so sorry**."

Her palm had drifted away. "I can't let him die."

She understood now, more than ever, what he was going through. Though she was just on the opposite side of the coin tonight. "You can't do it this way though. Whatever your looking for, whatever Archer and his goons are, you're complicit with whatever they do."

"I don't care." One of the most dangerous words to ever slip from Human lips. McCain felt her HiPower weight a little more heavily. "It's a means to an end."

McCain had seen the specks of dried blood on him now. "They killed Mr. Silph."

"I know."

"You know Lyra. She's the Champion! She must have connections or help or-"

"There wasn't anything she could do." Silver formed fists with his hands as he pocketed his Feraligatr's Pokéball again. "Nothing that I could ask of her that wouldn't jeopardize all the good she's done."

So, he found some solution to his partner's cancer here, stowed right next to the Master Balls that Archer sought. But to get them, to grab them, it would mean breaking the law, breaking the common decency that was expected of her. He couldn't do that to her. That much McCain could deduce. This wasn't the first desperate man she had confronted. Silver had hardly been the most innocent.

"I can't rely on her anyway!" He thrashed a monitor off the table, cracking it. "I need to be strong on my own and- and-!" Listening to himself he sounded insane. It sounded exactly like that to McCain.

More than ever McCain had glanced at the gun that was thrown asides, she walking to it, racking back the slide and ejecting the mag as she returned in front of him. "Safety was on." She held the entire affair in one hand, away from him, eyes furrowed.

Question: What did they do now?  
Answer: The thing that kept both of them alive.

"You know I can't let them continue."

"And you know I have to get into that vault."

McCain furrowed her eyebrows, the tiredness of the night returning to her. "How did you know all of this was happening anyway?"

"They asked me, a month ago." Silver admitted. "They needed me to come. I said no, until I found out what we needed was in here."

"Needed?" He nodded at her question.

Silver had said too much. The radio in his pocket had rumbled with sound and the two looked at each other in new light.

_"Silver. Please respond."_ It was Archer.

"I can't let you stop what they're doing. I can't." Silver said with so much heart, so much cold. He knew it was wrong, but sometimes good people did bad things, and he had never been a good person anyway, he told himself.

"I have to." She took a step back. It was her job. Her responsibility.

"Give me my gun." Silver spoke lunacy. "I won't tell them you're here or I saw you. You can run. Elevators are blocked off from going below 80, but you can use the staircase."

She wanted to scream at him, to explain her reasoning had just been as personal as his, but even then, she had already said too much if they did a simple roll call of who the hostages were. She had told Silver who she was.

"I can't promise what I'll do if you let me go. You know that." She couldn't promise what she'd do if she saw him again.

"I'm giving you more choice than you ever did your own victims. Take it."

For all of the empathy she had given him she still wanted to spit in his face at that moment.

With one hand McCain had taken the magazine of his pistol, pushing rounds out until she felt the base spring, letting them all drop on the floor as the gun went with the mag, clattering.

_ "Silver. Respond."_

McCain sucked in the spit between her teeth, eyes honed on him as she backed away. "You think she would be proud? Your Pokémon?"

Silver rose the radio to his mouth. "Go ahead."

_ "Lillie is dead and Serena is in bad shape. We need down here."_

McCain had been backing up all the while, her gun, finally, leaving its holster and held at her hip, backing away to the stairwell access as she hung on Silver's next words. "Okay. I'm coming." He pocketed the radio, raising his hands, mocking, one hand had been raised and folded down into a fist. A stark wave goodbye as she bust out into the stairwell to parts unknown. He prayed she made the right choice.

* * *

She had fallen a few stories when she made the jump. A few more tumbling endeavors in the air vent had sent her down further, and as she found out, Silver, that boy, he had been on 85. When she ran from him and saw the stairway and the numbers denoting floors she had gotten back to where she started, which was okay, considering the alternative was dead.

Running up one she had come back to 86. The boardroom had been as she left it: no one in there. She had cleared the room, gun up, as she retraced her steps the first time around, no need to be ducking beneath tables. The red splotch where Mr. Silph's head had stained the floor was still there with his overturned chair. That place was somewhere she could rest for the moment, too much information going through her head as she had gone to the windows and sat herself down.

Her Styler still had a functional watch, looking at the time. 9:30. The Rocketeers had started the show at 7:45 abouts. She hadn't even wanted to do the math in her head but she had to remember how much sleep she was going off of:

She left Fiore at 3AM this morning. Barely slept on the flight over. Had stayed awake the entire period between Cerulean and Celadon, taking the train over to Saffron with the full intention of going to sleep in her bed, her actual bed, in her actual home. A full 19 hours without sleep doing actions that definitely required her to be in fighting form. It wasn't as if she was unfit, but she had been going on a stomach that had been gassed and a mind that was full of a case that had been now solved and the worry of her Husband and Child dying.

Of all the people she was going to meet today, from gym leaders to corporate leaders, the roster had only expanded with Silver himself: Giovanni's son!

Was this how _those _trainers felt? The ones that eventually, always, found themselves as champions of the Regions? Rubbing shoulders with important people and villains had been their normal. Now it was hers.

Sinking against the low wall below a window, the meeting room had been in between her and the rest of the floor. If any came out of the elevator they wouldn't see her outright as her body knew it. She held her gun with both hands, held up, when she felt it touch her forhead she had realized that a bout of microsleep had hit her unkindly as she jerked. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

In another life she could've been a punk kid like Silver. Hell, maybe she had been in this life. She hadn't been as dramatic in pulling herself out of it however.

She felt for the kid, she really did. He didn't want to have anything to do with this, but desperation had been a mother of some very bad ideas and those bad ideas, justifying all of this, had ended up in death.

Decisions.

She had decisions to make and she couldn't even begin to think about to what ends.

Times like this she missed being a cop. Having a lieutenant or captain tell them what was what and covering her ass. The best decisions in her line of work had always been made over bad, hot coffee in shitty, uncleaned mugs. She needed coffee. Tipping her head up at the boardroom it wasn't that surprising there had been a coffee machine off to the side, near where she had hid the first time.

Starting off in a crawl, shamefully, she had realized that each time she had even entertained the thought of sitting down exhaustion wanted to keep her there. Not that she was doing any good now standing, slowly making her way over to the coffee machine and its paper cups adjacent. While she waited for the drip of the coffee to come, the banality of her loading up a cup and hearing the machine steam, she had dropped the mag in her pistol into her hand. At max, five rounds left in this mag. She pocketed it, topping off her pistol, glancing at the stairwell and the elevator hallway at times as her coffee spilled out.

Hopefully her message had gotten out, for she was able to raise someone, petulant as they were. She didn't care that the coffee burned her tongue, it sprung her just a little more awake, hoping the cavalry was coming.

If they hadn't, then, well, she was about to become a lot more predatory, a lot more hunter-killer than that world had any business letting her be. The coffee's steam cleared her pores, what formation of condensation on her face dug deep as black pebbles of water formed on her fingers. Her face was dirty.

_No, _she thought. _More than my face._

* * *

**December 24th**

**9:40 PM, Kanto-Johto Standard Time**

Downstairs they had known what was coming the second that the message their interloper sent was out. The doorman had been prepared when a teal-haired, generational sight had knocked at the glass doors of Silph Co. below.

The Jennys, much like the Joys, had been a large family with noted social service history. As it had back in the day, the Jenny and Joy family had made it their trade to get caught up in either the policing or hospital service. The patriarchs of that family had a lot of daughters for some miraculous reason, and so the look of them had been spread across the world.

Nowadays, not every Jenny or Joy had been of the bloodline. But there had been an expectation that those that had joined their creed had looked similar enough.

The current Jenny in Saffron City had been a particularly veteran officer, swinging her night stick idly by its lanyard as she awaited by the glass door, called upon basically as she was clocking out of the station that night. Bundled up her chest had been a particular source of warmth. It had been her Growlithe, sandwiched comfortably between her and her puffy coat.

All had been fine, the little Pokémon panting in its excited state as it was taken out on a rather late-night walk, but something had changed the moment she had approached the Silph Co. Tower. It had started whining into her neck, not wanting to go any nearer.

"Yeah, yeah, I know bud. This'll be in and out, promise." She growled out reassuringly. It was little condolences as the Growlithe groaned out still. It was something odd, but the Jenny hadn't been given time to think about it as the front doorman had approached with a smile, unlocking the door.

"What can I do for ya officer?" Hoenn accent. Friendly enough though.

Jenny had flashed her badge as her Growlithe groaned even more. "Hi, just a general welfare check. See if that fire alarm and what not was all settled." The door was open, that right was waived as Jenny had stepped in. The doorman had been more than happy to let her in, retreating back to his desk, kicking his feet up on it and watching that still going television program.

_"Diantha of course, was always a very aesthetic battler. All pomp and power rolled into one as befit a woman of her particular enthusiasm. As we roll up for the 9__th__ match of Christmas Eve Tournament here in the Landwalker Memorial Stadium, we'll see how that beautiful style of fighting translates to the rough and tumble Barry's scrappy techniques."_

The doorman had pointed at the television as the Jenny passed through the metal detectors, they were off, going to lean now on the counter of the front desk looking at the whole affair.

"Got a few bucks on Barry. He's also been a straightforward trainer."

Jenny had feigned knowing what he was talking about with a complacent nod, looking back down that hallway toward the elevators. It hadn't been her first time in this building, but the doorman had been new.

"Mind if I go take a look around?" She motioned back at the elevator, running a hand through her Growlithe's hair as it became more and more agitated.

"Not unless you want to climb those elevators," the doorman said apathetically, not even turning his head. "When that misfire went off we disabled the elevators. Seeing as it's Christmas our handyman is out of town for a bit, so we won't be able to fix 'em."

Her Growlithe had gone off again, really wryly. "Ah, fair enough." She said hurriedly in response, adjusting her cap. "So we're all good?"

"Ripe as rain ma'am. Sorry the department sent you out this far."

The department had reported, not only the fire alarm misfire from before, but a woman, screaming obscenities and then the sound of gunfire. A hoax? A prank? It didn't seem like it was happening here.

"Alrighty then. Thank you for your time. Happy holidays."

Just as fast as she had walked onto the scene, she had left, leaving those doors as the doorman followed her out, locking the door.

Her Growlithe had been whining less, but still, something was off. Very off. Giving the man a wave she had feigned another smile, walking off, her radio in her hand. "Dispatch. Uh, seems all clear."

_ "Copy 3 Lincoln."_

Jenny would've let that be that, but she had seen something: a glint of black on that flat surface of the plaza around the building. Due to the off-white color of the tiling it had definitely stuck out as she approached. If anything, she would do her good deed for the day, picking up some trash. She had assumed it was a container from a gift, already opened, but it hadn't fluttered in the wind. That same wind making her curly blue bangs flutter in front of her eyes.

It was a box, elongated, like one of those wireless speakers she had, but it was metallic. Through her gloves she had picked it up. It had been hollow, one end of it open. There had been no place for this to have come from but-

The police officer had looked up, but as she was doing it, she had caught, in the distance, a figure of orange out in the night sky.

* * *

"Keep your mask on," Dawn had ordered, wiping up the last of the blood from her tools, broken teeth and the single bullet that had found its mark in a napkin on Danny's table. "You were ugly enough without being blasted."

"Fucking hurts." An Espeon had appeared on the desk as Serena sat on it, closing its eyes, its third-eye like gem glowing as a psychic aura surrounded his face, numbing the area.

"Good girl." Dawn had ran a hand through her Pokémon's fur appreciatively. "I've stopped the bleeding for now, don't push it. Or get shot again."

Blue and May had been present in Danny's office now, along with Archer, looking as Dawn tended to Serena. Blue had still been furious, and surprisingly, May had been as well.

"Silver's coming down." Archer reported, pocketing his radio as the rest of the men had still worked over the hostages.

"And the vault?" Serena had asked for his troubles, half of his words slurred.

"Lex has gotten through three of the 7 locks. He's halfway done."

Upwards Lex had moved on from software to hardware, one of the many crates that they had brought in had been carrying a hydro-assisted drill, and he had been performing what was essentially metal-electronic surgery with it as he pierced the door as best he could to kill circuits.

"Son of a bitch." Serena had refused to look at his own face, instead opting to throw some of the bloody rags used to clean him up away to the floor in a wet splotch. "How are we gonna fucking keep doing this Archer? That bitch will screw something up big, and it won't just be one of our faces."

The Espeon had chirped at Serena. _Language._

"Fuck you." He had responded back. Outside his Nidoking had moved to see if he was okay, and he had slid him a thumbs up.

Archer's Houndoom chuffed a few words at her trainer as he thought it over.

Blue overheard. "Bitch is right. We gotta go hunting before we proceed with anymore of the plans. She has one of our radios and can listen into our transmissions." Still sensitive over the lost of his brother, Blue didn't want to use an excuse to go hunting for his killer, but he needed to.

No more than two people at a time needed to look over the hostages, that left 12 of them, Archer and Silver now included, to cover twenty floors up to the top. "She left the submachine gun, but dropped all the ammo down the shaft."

"Then that should be it then?" Archer asked, hopeful.

The three Rocketeers that had chased her up top shook her heads.

"She has another gun. Pistol."

So still very much a threat.

"And you said," Archer pointed to Blue, "You saw her crawling into one of the air vents?"

Blue nodded scornfully. "There are miles of air vents in this building, she could be anywhere by now."

Archer's Houndoom had garnered his attention again, making a point of sniffling her nose. The other Pokémon in the room got the message, looking to each of their masters expectantly.

Dawn hadn't been convinced. "Sending the Pokémon after her? Seems overkill, don't it?"

"With the way she's been fighting us?" May had spoken up for what felt like the first time in hours, his sing-song accent biting. "It's the right call." Heavily armed as he was there were always right tools. Pokémon were tools to be used here.

"But who the fuck is she then to warrant it?" Dawn had pointed one of her pliers at him. "Someone who is packing heat?"

Blue bellyached. "That's a nine mil." Pointing at the dislodged shot sitting by the teeth Dawn had to tear out of Serena on her way to get it. "We don't have any. So that's hers. Has to be."

"A cop then…. One of your people?" Archer had made a very distinct observation. May had shook his head almost immediately.

"I know where they all are tonight. There's only one retired asshole in town, and he's a dude." He answered, offended almost.

Fair. Archer had guessed further. "If she can carry a gun, then she must be trained for it. Almost no one in this region carries privately. Especially not in a city as Liberal as this."

Something else: That Pidgeot that knocked off Blue's shot. It seemed… better than he had expected. "She had some way helping the Pokémon that were affected by your jammers, Archer." he remembered.

Archer's eyes widened. "What?"

Rui had affirmed, still shaken from it all. "Yeah. We found a Pidgeot up top that got caught in your radio waves. It seemed good enough to fight back. Blue shot it."

"There's not much that can counteract my signals. Nothing short of an UHF RFID repeater, and even then, they'd have to know what exact frequencies I'm broadcasting with, and they change at a set interval." Archer had gone through his techno-speak, flying over most of their heads except May's.

"Yeah but what if it's a broad-spectrum overlap? That's how SEAD-planes operate." He talked on military terms.

"Then that's professional gear." Archer fired back. Professional gear.

They all lingered on that thought as Serena's bandages dampened, cursing, replacing it in short order as the brevity of their situation set in: All plans, even the best ones, were faulty to this one observance:

They all fell apart when confronted with an enemy. They didn't think there would be any here though.

"We expected there to be resistance tonight. If not her, then the regional authority. Is that correct?" Archer had started rolling into command, he had planned this heist for half a year. An external factor such as an actually effective loose hostage was within the margin of error. "We expected a fight, because that's **part of the plan. **Although this is a setback, this is not a cancellation of our plan. Once Silver is here I'll tell you all what we can do next."

Clumsily Silver had been thumbing his bullets back into the magazine as the elevator came back down to 83, his mask on. The very sight of him loading the magazine back into the gun had riled some fear in the whole hostage group and, unhealthily, a surge had come up through him. This was what power felt like. He looked out across that group of hostages, Human and Pokémon alike. He had seen this type of thing twice over before: Once, as a child, in this very building when his father tried to take it all. Next, in Goldenrod and the radio station, this time he trying to free them. But now he had been the hostage taker.

It was said, for many sons, their story had been a generational one. Many had become their fathers in the end. What Silver didn't know about that parable was that sons didn't have a choice, not really, in the end.

The hostages had all looked at him at fear, cast alongsides Rocketeers.

"He's not wearing their uniform." Danny had stood up again with Hops on his shoulders, an increasingly familiar move. He had never been as physical with Hops through his entire life. Hops had growled in affirmation.

Silver had seen the Grovyle pop to attention, staring at him intently on top of-

McCain.

Silver blinked a few times. He knew that researchers name and his face from the reports he had read from field testing of new potions.

Daniel **McCain.**

What he was going to do with that information now he didn't have much time to process as he looked out of the window behind McCain in the background and saw a very familiar sight: a Dragonite. He recognized its orange silhouette anywhere, and suddenly his veins had all gone cold.

Dear god, it was her. **Her.**

His feet moved before he could process, running to Daniel McCain's office where everyone had been set up, ignoring the fact that there had been blood on the table.

"Archer!" He yelled in the door way, the guards who had seen what Silver saw running to the windows with their rifles ready, Pokémon riled into form as they felt a battle near. "She's coming!"

"The interloper?!" All the men in the office had readied, the Espeon hissing, ready for a fight.

Silver shook his head urgently, panting. "No! **Lyra!**"

Archer's eyes sunk deep, and suddenly a lone gunwoman didn't seem so bad anymore. History played back in his head: the beat down in the rotunda of Goldenrod's radio tower, how all his plans came crumbling down because someone whose control and will over Pokémon had been so drastically above his own. Years had passed, and she had only become stronger, more mature, without the reservations of her youth. He had come running out of the office followed.

She didn't have any of the Dragonite-line when she had challenged him, and if Lance's ability with his own had been notable, hers would've been deadly. Archer had looked out the windows and saw it coming right at the building, a minute to spare.

"Get the hostages to act casual. Everyone else hide!" Archer had retreated back into an office, Silver on his heels. He had been so close to achieving his goals and if she had a hint that he was here, she would've burned that entire building down.

It was there a particular hierarchy had been discovered.

Hops had immediately twisted his head to look behind him when that young man that emerged from the elevator saw what, for all intents and purposes was a ghost. Instead he had seen that Dragonite as well. Everyone had seen it, the hostages stirring up as the Rocketeers and their Pokémon geared up, ready for whatever was coming until they got new orders.

Danny had noticed something else: "That Dragonite's form is slumped. It's flying with riders."

That far out he could tell. How many Dragonite riders had there been in the Indigo League? None who hadn't been in some relation to Lance or Claire, and he had known where they were tonight according to his social media feed. The only other Dragonite rider had been made clear to him, but he couldn't declare it vocally. He didn't want to get people's hopes out, or to wear the Rocketeer's hopes thin. Only bad things would follow.

It was May that had assumed absolute command through his mask.

"Alright! All of you, act like you're still having this party! You try to signal that Dragonite you're **dead**!"

The world had gone silent for Hops as too much information bombarded his head at once. If it hadn't been for that damned haze over him, he would've not double guessed himself as that Rocket that cried out spoke.

There was no time to double check as the makeshift farce was enacted.

The Rocketeers had disappeared into the offices, peering out from their blinds at a group of people who had just been ordered to chill, despite their predicament, widening out their group. Some had taken the opportunity to go to the refreshments, downing water, taking finger foods. While others had still just frozen where they were, trying to avoid looking at the windows.

Salvation had seemed so very far away, and, frankly, as Hops had wondered, if this Dragonite had been Janie's doing.

* * *

McCain had returned to the wall of the windows, sitting on it calmly, nursing hot and shitty coffee as she tried to derive its caffeine from it desperately. It wouldn't sit in her stomach well, empty as it was, but it would have to do something. If she had a choice she would've preferred to just snort coffee beans if she was convinced that would've done her better, but she didn't need the coffee to wake up as she saw what everyone in that building did moments earlier:

A Dragonite, soaring toward them from the north.

She recognized how it flew: Top Rangers such as her boss had often frequented them as a mode of travel.

But flying? Around the tower? She had seen what happened to that Pidgeot, and if its riders were on it when it happened…

It was a long way down.

"Hey! Hey! Oh no no no!"

The coffee cup clattered to the floor near her bare feet, she looking left and right, trying to find a way to open those windows and scream out. Could her voice reach out that far? She doubted it, but she had to try something. Something!

The butt of her gun had slammed the nearest window pane in front of her immediately, a chip seen as the metal hit glass.

Tired, afraid, frantic, the answer to most of her troubles had been mostly the same tonight: Shoot them.

Thankfully the Dragonite as it approached had levied off just outside of its direct airspace, warily respecting the windbreak the tower offered as it showed off its side profile: two riders.

McCain in her tired haze could barely see them out, but a speck of orange, even more orange than the Dragonite, had stuck out from the entire view.

Misty had clamped her arms around Lyra's midsection as they had orbited Silph Co., keeping her cape from engulfing her as they rode as a pair. She never liked flying. Or bugs for that matter. Lyra's Dragonite's scales had perhaps hit a little too close for home to her as it only set in they were doing this with no safety equipment: just pure grip strength and trust in Lyra's Dragonite. "Real romantic!" Misty yelled into Lyra's ear, gripping her tighter.

Silver had said the same thing to her the first time they did this and he had wrapped his arms around her so, so tight.

It'd been nice.

She had been silent as she looked out at Silph, scanning its mostly dark floors, the brightest one almost up at the time. Around the 80th story if she could judge. She had done this enough that she had kept a pair of goggles handy at all times, allowing her to see out. Circling the building several times the definition, or rather, the deductive reasoning of what they saw at that lit up floor from a distance had been assumed:

"Seems like just another holiday party!" Misty had yelled into Lyra's ear. Several times did the Dragonite circle the building, concentrating on that one strip of lights and people going about, to them, their routine.

She wish she could call upon her Typhlosion, up here in the air. He always had better vision than her. With one palm she had tapped the neck of her Dragonite several time, he turning his head over, shaking it subtly. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary as well.

"We're moving in closer!" Lyra screamed out to Misty over the wind.

Inside, McCain had gone from butt of her pistol to a chair in short order, throwing it against the resilient glass. She couldn't have wasted ammo blowing it open, or risking a ricochet, so instead she had nothing but her strength, yelling with toss as she aimed at a splintering of cracks in the window, going out like an Ariados's web. It was inevitable now that she heard the glass itself straining.

With one last haul of the chair the great glassy crash of a window being broken was heard and the blast of cold air almost blew her back. There was one thing to do before that Dragonite banked in closer and killed its riders. She had hung out of the window by its frame, one arm out stretched and waited till the Dragonite rounded her corner again. Closer she had seen who it was and suddenly she knew her life had been exponentially complicating. Like the flags of her fathers, she felt the breeze as she saw Misty look at her.

God forgive her. Instead of a prayer beneath her breath, she was being cynical instead:

"Welcome to the party, gals…"

"What's that?" Misty had pointed the anomaly out, of what looked like someone, a person, hanging out of the window pointing back at her.

That's when they heard the sonic cracks above them, the flash of fire that emanated from that person's arm. Misty had known exactly what that was as she had hauled Lyra's head down and squeezed her leg, the Dragonite tilting down and away in a dive. "We've got a problem!"

For all Lyra cared for, Misty had just outlined the understatement of the year.

The sound of gunfire a few floors up had caused 83 to go silent, the Rocketeers bursting out of their hiding places.

"Who the hell-!?" Archer stormed out before they all listened to the gunfire report.

That gunfire sound didn't come from through the floors they realized: it was coming from outside and up.

Rui and the Rocketeer who had been named Cheren had been closest to the stairway. With their feet they would get upward faster as they went without order. This was their chance to solve one problem before another appeared.

The rest of the Rocketeers knew the gig was up as they rushed to the windows, blowing them open and then aiming down at the Dragonite.

It didn't rain or snow that Christmas Eve. It hailed.

* * *

The Dragonite had roared above as it twisted and turned down, echoing through the night as a fight had come for it. The Jenny had only looked on, confused, looking back at the doorman for some sort of answer for what was happening as he had exited the building halfway: in his hands a-

She had ducked immediately, scrambling away as she heard the puffs, the pops, of suppressed gunfire cross right over her. The closest cover had been a large flower pot decorating that plaza, but if anything, she did all she could do was scream into her radio:

**"This is 3-Lincoln I need backup now! Gunfire! Silph Building!"**

She had dove, scuffing her side, flying behind that flower pot as pieces of it were chipped off. The first time that gunfire had stopped its wild fire at her she had dashed again toward the street, not even looking back as she had crossed that distance that even an Arcanine would be pressed to handle under the circumstances. All the while she had been holding her Growlithe tight to her chest, hopping over the raised barrier of the plaza into the street.

Only then did she hear the cacophony of sustained gunfire above her, bullet impacts mere feet away sending concrete chips flying and tracers bouncing. Distantly, she heard the whizzing of slower attacks: Flash Cannon, Toxic Sting maybe, Razor Leafs and other psychic beam attacks. The world had gotten very, very loud, and she was moments away from being consumed by it.

She thought it was over until a Dragonite had appeared over her, its wings cast like a shell over her as she heard two pairs of feet hop off of it. "Come on! Let's move!"

The Dragonite had winced as gunshots landed in its extended wing, Jenny not even looking at who had come to protect her, moving down the street until the next building over blocked all lines of sight.

Keeling over at her knees, letting in cold air into her lungs, she had let the vice grip over her chest go as her Growlithe dropped onto the sidewalk: safe, looking up at her, and then the large dragon still protecting them all. "Helluva night to wear heels. Holy shit."

"It's a helluva night to be an officer, ma'am." _That voice._

Jenny had looked up to see who it had been, and she had realized she was in the presence of modern royalty. "Champion Kasper!"

Despite it all, Lyra had only offered a hand down as Misty took a look at her dragon's right wing. "Please, only Lyra ma'am. Have you called for backup?"

Her answer had been the roar of sirens that rose throughout the entire city.

The war machine opened up its evil eye.


End file.
